


Clay and Pearl

by KnightedRogue



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: F/M, Force-Sensitive Leia Organa, Pre-ESB, Rebel Alliance mission, pre-ESB AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-08
Updated: 2018-05-10
Packaged: 2019-03-28 19:32:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 29,304
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13910688
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KnightedRogue/pseuds/KnightedRogue
Summary: On a mission for the Rebel Alliance, Han and Leia wade deep into the crime and grime of Nar Shaddaa. Pre-ESB AU, rated for language and adult themes.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Clay and Pearl _is a pre-ESB AU that will update on Fridays. As a rule, I will never reference Disney canon; I am from a long-lost era in which the pseudo-canon was the Expanded Universe. Any backgrounds, characterizations or settings will hail from that canon. Disney owns_ Star Wars, _but they do not own my twenty-five year plus history with Han and Leia, and they can take that from my cold, dead fingers._
> 
> _This fic is freely written and freely given: a present from me to you. I make no money from this enterprise. Comments are always appreciated, though I humbly request you submit them with the same sense of community and love with which I give you this story. A human sits behind this keyboard!_
> 
>   _And, finally, I hope you enjoy. Happy Fridays, my friends! Here we go… ___

The smoke stung Leia’s eyes, blaster fire zipping past her ears with a wild _crack_ and a rush of heat. She pumped her legs harder and blinked, trying to keep track of Han ahead of her. The marketplace blurred past them, colors bright and vivid as adrenaline coursed through her veins. Her lungs burned; sweat cascaded down her back.

A single blaster bolt lanced past her and nicked Han’s heel. With startled horror, Leia watched as he stumbled, tried to regain his footing and then stumbled again, his knee hitting the dirt with a pained groan. Leia’s heart stopped as she caught up to him, as she tried to grab his arm and pull him up. 

“Fuck,” he muttered. _“Fuck.”_

She pulled on his arm again but his knee stayed pressed into the dirt. Leia gritted her teeth and glanced behind her, eyeing the incoming stormtroopers with dread running up and down her spine. 

“Get up,” she yelled and ducked, pulling his head to her chest as a blaster bolt whipped over them. _“Get up.”_

The stormtroopers were less than fifteen meters away, armor rattling and voices rising. Their fire slowed and then stopped and Leia realized with a pang that their orders must be to take them alive.The clicks of blaster settings switching from _kill_ to _stun_ surrounded Han and Leia. 

She turned back to look at Han. His face was splotched with mud, his eyes looking at her with such calm assurance that it stopped her breath.

“Go,” he said, squeezing her hand. “Get to the _Falcon_.”

Leia shook her head, heart in her throat, looking behind her again to the troopers as they fanned out along the street. Han and Leia had less than fifteen seconds before they were enclosed, before any chance of escape disappeared. 

“No,” she said and tugged his hand again. “Get _up._ ”

“Leia.”

She turned to him, ready to beg, ready to plead with him to just _stand up_. This couldn’t be the end for him, not here on Nar Shaddaa, not now, not after he’d kissed her and sworn he was ready to stay for her. If he could just stand, they could get away, they could run and—

“You gotta go,” he said, pain etched into the line of his mouth but his eyes, oh, his eyes were so calm, so _grateful_ and this wasn’t how this happened, this wasn’t how this ended, before it even started. _No._

“Your Highness.”

A deep bass. Harsh breathing through a mechanized mask. Leia’s entire body went cold.

Vader. Her worst nightmare, the enemy she loathed and feared, the only man who inspired such dread in her. She knew what it was to be Vader’s prisoner and she could not, _would not_ , let herself be taken into his custody again. 

She stepped in front of Han’s crouched body and lifted her blaster, aiming it square at the scourge’s chestplate. Sweat rolling into her eyes but with an arm that didn’t shake, didn’t waver in the slightest, she squeezed off one shot before the troopers fired at her.

Unthinking, she pulled her blaster back and straightened her left arm, fingers splayed. As if watching a holofilm, Leia observed with some distance the stun bolts hit her hand, dissipate into her glove, a sting running through her arm. 

But she didn’t fall. 

Another stun bolt. And another. And another. All hitting their target with precision that stormtroopers only managed at point-blank range. And Leia felt them, felt the energy course through her, felt the energy nestle into her rib cage beneath her lungs and solidify in a thrumming center of power. 

And still she didn’t fall.

“The hell?” she heard Han say from behind her, a low note beneath the chaotic melody of the stun bolts. 

Her eyes were on Vader, though, boring into his mask, feeling his automatic breathing as if it were her own, as if she were feeding off his presence and her hatred of him, of what he stood for, of how he’d ruined her and her people and the people of the galaxy. 

_You won’t take Han from me, too,_ she thought. 

Time stopped as the monster in front of her raised a hand, silencing the stormtroopers’ blasters as quickly as if he’d spoken. Leia’s hand shook, extended in front of her, and her lungs burned, her torso alight with electricity, absorbing the stun bolt energy in some bizarre, wholly inexplicable miracle of physics.

_I should be unconscious_ , she managed to think before Vader took three steps toward her. Gasping for breath, she lowered her left hand, feeling weak and powerful at once.

The dark lord stood above her, so close she could feel his breathing in her chest. She felt Han try to stand again, manage to shift his weight onto his uninjured leg and rise behind her. She was trapped between her most intimate enemy, the vilest trash she’d ever known, and the man she loved.

_Loved?_

Yes, loved. Without consent and without aim, she loved him and she would rather die than let him fall into Vader’s clutches. _Loved. In love with._

__

__

_He loves you, too._

She dropped her blaster to the ground, reached behind her for Han’s hand, aware that there was no hope in killing Vader now. He was too close. All she could do was force him to kill them quickly.

He was closer to her than he’d been since he’d gripped her shoulder as her entire planet was destroyed.

_Filth_ , she thought. _Wretch. Abomination._

“Obi-Wan?” Vader said, as if to himself.

Leia closed her eyes, breathed deeply and then harnessed the energy in her stomach, the accumulated chaos of her anger and the stun bolts …

… and then she _exploded._


	2. Nar Shaddaa

_Three days earlier_

Leia Organa didn’t believe in destiny. 

Destiny was a concept for a lazy mind: a crutch for beings who deferred their choices to an unnamed entity. Destiny implied that beings were not responsible for their own choices, that a larger plan moved the pieces on the dejarik board independent of will or desire. And Viceroy Bail and Queen Breha had taught her better than that. She’d been raised to take action, to foil chaos at every turn, to champion civility and goodness with every fiber of her being. She _chose_ to fight; she _chose_ to work for the betterment of the galaxy. It was her choice and she clung to that choice with every cell in her body. 

But there were forces at work in her life, in the universe: forces that made her question what she’d always known. Specifically two men, polar opposites of each other: Luke Skywalker and Han Solo.

Since she’d met them in the bowels of the Death Star a year and a half ago, her rag-tag saviors had represented two very different ways of looking at destiny. Luke, with his strict belief in the Force, in spirits, in the magical realm of quasi-futures and predestinations. And then Han, with his finger forever soldered to his trigger, always putting stock in his hunches though he vociferously denied he had any metaphysical beliefs whatsoever. 

Leia shifted in her seat with a sense of unease, tapping an index finger on the armrest of the navigator’s chair in the cockpit of the _Millennium Falcon._

Han’s hunches were the source of her current discomfort; his repeated questions and weighted comments about this mission had put her on edge. She’d learned to trust his _bad feelings_ as a matter of practical survival. How then could she say without a doubt that there was nothing to his—and therefore Luke’s—particular brand of spirituality? Belief in the Force or belief in oneself? They were, essentially, the same thing, weren’t they?

Leia shook her head, frustrated with her own obsessive mental gymnastics, and focused on the viewport in front of her. The _Falcon_ speared through the atmosphere of Nar Shaddaa with precision and an artful sort of engineering finesse. Dull green gaseous clouds blew across the _Falcon_ ’s hull. A noxious grime collected on the viewport as they descended, swift and athletic through first the outer atmosphere and into the clearer air nearest the ground. 

Leia had visited many worlds in her life. Her work with the Imperial Senate had ensured that she maintain a low bar for acceptable environments. Sentient life formed and thrived on planets with methane oceans and radiation that reduced carbon particles to nothing. Beings lived in the haloes of supernovas and the crusts of black holes. It was never wise to discount the hardiness of life and the environments that sustained it. 

She’d even been to many pseudo-habitable moons and space stations in her time with the Alliance: the dangerous, the poisonous, the decrepit and the decayed. Wherever defiance sprouted, Leia followed, sure as the day was long.

Or not. Some planets had days that only lasted a standard hour. She’d seen that, too. 

And yet nothing, _nothing_ , had looked as sickeningly pale and unhealthy as the off-color clouds of this planet. It reminded her of the heavy mists on Kamino: visceral, weighted, like density was a planetary competition. But Kamino’s heavy atmosphere was pregnant with water, not filth. Even if the water was contaminated, it seemed pure when viewed from the inside of a cockpit. Here, the environment held particles of ugly origin, visible even to human eyes. Chunks of _something_ swept past the viewport and she grimaced in disgust. 

Leia was tempted to lean over and toggle the _Falcon_ ’s belly gun. She had a hunch that the plasma might light the atmosphere on fire. 

“I have a bad feeling about this,” Han said. He flicked a switch and the viewport flashed, magnetic web clearing the grime. “Nothing good comes out of Nar Shaddaa.”

“Enviro-stabilizers do,” she said. 

Chewbacca growled from the co-pilot’s seat. While her Shryiiwook comprehension was improving, idioms still confused her. She’d learned the tonal values to Chewie’s language quickly: growls versus groans versus the amused melody of his chuckle. But, as with most languages, sentiments that didn’t directly translate into Basic words were difficult for her. When she had the time, she’d started to use circumlocution and pantomime to learn. Only when stressed or annoyed did she resort to direct translation from either of the other two of the _Falcon_ ’s passengers.

She turned a questioning look to the protocol droid magno-clamped to the seat on her left. “Threepio?”

See-Threepio turned his head, jumping at the opportunity to be useful. “Chewbacca says that one can find stabilizers on any number of worlds. And if you permit me to add—”

“No, Goldenrod. He said _you can’t honestly be dumb enough to make a deal with the Hutts_ ,” Han interrupted. “And I agree. This is insane.”

“Since when does _insane_ make you balk, Captain?” she asked.

Han grunted a low oath, then spoke louder so she could understand him. “ _Insane_. is fine. It’s the _Hutt_ part that makes me want to burn thrusters and get outta here.”

Leia knew a little of Han’s debt to a Hutt on Tatooine. She’d picked up few specifics from oblique comments from the man himself and slightly less oblique comments from Chewie. Han was at best tight-lipped about the debt and at worst downright angry whenever she tried to ask him about it. 

She’d once proposed arranging for the Alliance to cover the _Falcon_ ’s fuel expenses for a year while he ran missions for them. The extra credits would help him accrue enough to pay off the Hutt, she’d hoped. All she’d asked in return was a signed intention to officially join the Alliance at the end of the year. Even when he drove her crazy, even when she wanted to throw him out an open airlock, she could recognize that beings like Han Solo were desperately needed in the Alliance ranks: beings with experience, skill and a hefty level of insanity to get the job done.

Han had stared at her for a long moment after her proposal, narrowed his eyes, and informed her that if she offered anything of the sort to him again, he’d take off for parts unknown before she could blink.

She hadn’t offered again.

“We aren’t dealing directly with the Hutts,” Leia said. “We have the intermediary. We’ll be fine.”

Han hissed a bitter laugh. “Just because you have a smuggler running between you and the Hutts doesn’t mean they won’t screw you over. That’s their whole M.O., sweetheart.”

Han flicked a switch and Leia felt the _Falcon_ ’s artificial gravity lessen until she was weightless, strapped into the navigator’s seat. Instantly, three centimeters of space appeared between her thigh and the smooth, aged leather of the chair. She scowled, waiting for Nar Shaddaa’s natural gravity to take hold, knowing that the smuggler had prematurely taken the artificial gravity system offline a second earlier than need be. Leia hated the feeling of weightlessness and Han knew it. 

_Damn man_ , she thought. 

A second ticked by and then her body returned to mass and volume and weight. 

“It’s a calculated risk,” she answered him, struggling to maintain the conversation. She’d be damned if she let on how much the weightlessness had unnerved her. “The heaters are worth it.” 

Chewie barked what sounded like a question. Leia caught _you sure_ and _contact_ but little else. 

“He asks if you fully trust the intermediary,” Threepio translated.

Leia pursed her lips. “Absolutely.”

That was a partial lie; she was only half-certain the intel was valid. The deal with the Hutts for four hundred portable heaters had been a ramshackle effort between Alliance Intelligence and General Carlist Rieekan, and while she wasn’t perfectly sure of Intelligence, she trusted Carlist with her life. 

And the ends justified the means in this case: the payload was intended for the proposed Echo Base on small, unpopulated Hoth. Leia felt strongly that the bare, bald tundra planet was the Alliance’s best chance for a lasting land base. No one in their right mind would look to the naturally hostile system for the Rebel Alliance. 

The deal allowed no questions, no strings: nothing but an agreement cut on the quiet. The Hutts didn’t care who paid as long as they paid, and the Alliance paid. She’d made many such supply deals for rations, bacta, intel … 

Just never with the Hutts. 

She knew they were ruthless, utterly corrupt and unsavory. But credits were credits, after all. And she was very concerned about the rate of Alliance base evacuations in the past six months, the personnel and equipment they lost with each successive evacuation. It felt like she had barely settled into one base before the evac order was given and they were off to another one.

Han, however, seemed to have a different priority. “If you get me killed trying to find a few goddamned heaters, I’m gonna be pissed.”

Chewie rumbled in the affirmative and Leia rolled her eyes. “If you’re killed, you’re going to be dead, not pissed. I’ll take my chances.”

Han threw her a glare and then turned back to the viewport and the ugly world before him. Dull grey and brown firmnement rose to greet them through clouds of pollution and filth. 

Nar Shaddaa: the largest moon of Nal Hutta, the homeworld of the Hutts. The galaxy’s most stubborn and profitable dive bar. Crime ruled supreme in the metropolis, sprawling and insidious but without Coruscant’s civilized veneer. No one tried to pretend that any civility existed here. This was wild, pure anarchy in its highest form.

Han activated the magnetic net again, clearing the grime, and Leia could finally detangle the tallest spires of the enormous planet-wide city from its lower buildings. Dim, dank, polluted and ugly, the city thrummed with activity even as the _Falcon_ ’s atmospheric sensors warned her passengers of low air quality. Leia glanced at the sensor display, concerned: oxygen, nitrogen, carbon and a dangerously high sulfur content for humans. 

She wondered where all the green in the atmosphere came from. Neon? Copper? Sodium? An effect of pollution or a byproduct of some industry on the planet? 

Leia tried very hard not to grimace.

Nar Shaddaa by all rights should be uninhabitable after years of poor environmental management and the putrid exploitation of every possible resource until barren. Import/export businesses _had_ to thrive here; Nar Shaddaa could not sustain itself otherwise, if indeed it sustained itself now. Sociological studies done here before her birth had shown sweeping food shortages and a lack of clean drinking water for everyone except the native Ganks. Force only knew how terrible it was now.

The irony that she was here to find enviro-stabilizers hit her with a sudden, visceral pang. Ugly. Irresponsible. Nearly cannibalistic in its desire to consume. 

How— _how?_ —was Alderaan lost while this utter trash heap of a moon thrived? 

She pushed the pain aside, deeply contained and utterly ignored. Such was life; she had work to do. There wasn’t time for moral indignation.

Chewie rumbled a low question to Han, who shrugged in reply. “Jabba doesn’t send people here anymore, not since Fris took over the eastern continent. We should be fine.”

He used the word _fine_ rather loosely, Leia thought. Nothing about this situation seemed fine to her.

“You don’t have to leave the ship,” Leia offered. “I’ll go to the meet by myself. No need risking everybody.”

Han turned in his seat to give her a patronizing look, eyebrows up and eyes hard. “And how are you gonna hide the _Falcon_? She’s just as bountied as the rest of us.”

It figured he’d be more worried about his ship than their lives. 

“Once we land, the _Falcon_ will blend into the rest of the trash,” she shot back. “No one will know the difference.”

Chewie barked a laugh and Han scowled at her before turning back to the viewport. The set of his shoulders screamed amusement to her and she tried to stifle her grin.

“Maybe you’d like to find someone else to take you home, huh, sweetheart?” he muttered.

Leia tucked a smile into a glance at the hull to her right, amused at his tone but unwilling to show it. Flirtatious but without the flirting, she was used to his jabs.

“I hope so,” she said. “I don’t think this hunk of junk will make it out of the system.”

“What are you gonna do? Flap your royal arms real fast?”

She lost the battle with her mirth, softly laughing under her breath. Triumphant, Han threw her bright smile and then turned back to the viewport, leaving Leia with the barest embers of heat thrumming beneath her skin.

_Oh, Han_ , she thought. The man had no clue how close to the surface her heart was when he said and did things like that. It would be so easy, so effortless, to fall into him with the sort of terrible intimacy she craved from him. Surrounded by danger and Hutts and a world of horrors that she only knew from data reports, his touch would be so welcome, so wonderfully distracting—

Her smile faded, her own words echoing back to her with a sense of resigned sadness. 

_No_ , she demanded of herself. _You will not think that way._

But the image of his arms around her body, his lips on hers, the heat under his skin and the salt of his sweat on her tongue … they spiraled through her mind, far too difficult to suppress.

_Love. Lust. Want._

Like it was even possible for her to love anyone anymore. Like a parallel universe existed, one in which she hadn’t turned around that night on Meridian and abandoned her desperate longing for someone to just _touch_ her. Like she wasn’t slavishly committed to dying for the Alliance, sure of it, and that whatever mortal delights she experienced before that day were nothing in the end. 

Why invite more pain when he finally left? Since he was so determined to go? 

She was a martyr. Period. Martyrs didn’t have trysts, lovers, love. Martyrs had a cause.

The cockpit settled into a hush as the _Falcon_ descended, buildings growing larger and more distinct as her altitude dwindled. 

A spike of adrenaline lanced up her spine as she ran through her mission plans, wishing for the hundredth time that she’d been able to convince High Command to let Luke come along. But the Rogues were being used to scout potential new bases—including the one that might receive the heaters she bought here on Nar Shaddaa—and he was needed elsewhere. 

And, too, she didn’t want to sacrifice Luke if this mission went badly. 

Down, down, down the _Falcon_ travelled, until the grim shadows of the tallest spires overtook them. Leia stood from her chair and leaned between Han and Chewie to see more clearly. The city was enormous but lacked any sense of self-restraint. Ancient opulence littered the skyline, modern credits flowing from crime bosses to the average wretch on the street. Drudging wealth made in the spice trade, the buying and selling of slaves, an ugly apathy for politics or justice. 

Nar Shaddaa was as repellant a sight as a decaying corpse. 

Leia quietly exhaled, steeling herself for the hours ahead and then said, “Let’s go.”


	3. Deep Waters

Han and Chewie had made a private pact to hound Leia on this mission. No privacy. No autonomy. A prisoner on a mission of her own design.

It was obvious in the way the two males exchanged pointed looks when she offered to cover a third angle of _The Golden Hand_ , the cantina where they would meet the Hutt intermediary. Chewie’s eyes had narrowed until the blue almost disappeared into his caf-cinnamon fur. Han’s lips turned down and he shook his head, the angry look she knew so well in his eyes. 

“No.”

Leia wasn’t sure she’d heard him correctly. “ _No?_ ”

“No. Two angles are fine,” he said, as if that settled any argument.

Oh, but she’d worked with them both on far too many missions to fail to recognize their passive male protection bit. 

“Hang on,” she said, “this is _my_ mission!”

“I’ll go alone,” Han said, overlapping her last word. “You stay here with Chewie and cover this angle.”

He’d turned and left without another word. Leia’s spine straightened, tight and tense, miffed at such treatment. She _hated_ his protectiveness. Had a large Wookiee paw not descended on her shoulder she would have followed him into his blasted _second angle_ and reminded him exactly who was in charge here. 

With an angry hiss Leia watched, impotent, as Han adopted his devil-may-care walk—an amble, a stroll, a kind of mercenary promenade—and sauntered out of their alley and into the misty gray light of an East Nar Shaddaa afternoon. The air felt wet on her skin; it was like breathing in water with every inhale. Stale water. _Unclean_ water.

Ugh.

She pressed her lips together and fumed. She hated being babysat and, worse, she hated that Han and Chewie were probably right to sideline her until she got her bearings. Leia was nothing if not self-possessed and articulate. She wasn’t terrible at picking up social cues and mirroring others but she knew she didn’t have enough experience in the slough of the galactic underbelly to convincingly pull off a local aesthetic right away. _Princess training_ , Han called it. Her default mode was to look out of place on worlds such as this. 

The first step she made into public would give her away long before she had a chance to adopt a gait half as convincing as Han’s. Even the quick scurry from the _Falcon_ ’s berth in the spaceport to _The Golden Hand_ had been made largely in the shadows. 

She tried to calm herself, watching the sure line of Han’s back as he took a position against a half-crumbling duracrete wall across the street from them. The wind ruffled his hair in infuriatingly attractive ways, like even the natural elements were conspiring with him. He crossed one long leg over the other and shoved his hands in what she’d only just realized were pockets in his bloodstriped pants. 

_Pockets!_ she thought. How is there room in those things for pockets? He wears them so damn tight. 

Soft, low images. Light touches of fingertips to skin revealed by the slow retreat of navy blue fabric to star-kissed skin. The line of a blaster tie-down slipping through her palm. The sound of kneecaps hitting the gravel beneath her feet, the breeze warmer, the picture deeper, his face in softer lines as he smiled down at her ...

_Han_ , she almost said, a sigh, a plea, and the images recoiled, folding back into the safe haven of her mind like the _Falcon_ ’s retractable boarding ramp. Mortified, she blinked and turned to shake off Chewie’s paw, trying to steady herself by focusing on him. 

“I’m not going to run, Chewie,” she said. 

_Too fast_ , she reprimanded herself. _Too sudden. Control yourself, Leia!_

The Wookiee chuckled and moved his paw to pat her head twice, then removed it to rest on his bowcaster. She scowled, took a deep breath, and turned to watch the cantina entrance. A group of beings began to congregate there, the faithful diaspora of alcohol and regret, waiting. Her heart ached, watching them: their hopelessness, the need to dull their pain and forget.

The wind swelled and changed direction, tugging at their clothing and hair, and Leia wrinkled her nose as light rainfall swept over the street. 

A dull, slightly brown-tinged rain. 

Leia groaned. “Is everything on this rock so … _ugly_?”

Sickly? 

Wasted? 

She considered herself an inclusive person, worked hard to reserve judgement on anything or anyone until she had the opportunity to test her own assumptions. But nothing on Nar Shaddaa seemed to fill the shape it was supposed to fill. The clouds were green but the emaciated vegetation was not. The rain was brown: _how_ did it get that way? Did she even want to know? She had yet to see a child. Where were the children? 

It was odd. Green clouds, brown rain and no younglings? Like the opposite of home. 

Chewie chuckled and growled. She caught the _yes_ and a tone she thought she recognized as fond admiration.

She took a stab at his meaning. “It’s not all bad?” she guessed.

Chewie nodded and said: [Something] _beings can be worth more._

Trying to absorb meaning through context, Leia pressed her lips together. “My mother used to say: _beauty lies in deep waters, not shallow pools_. Is that what you mean?”

He growled in the affirmative, his tone kind. 

“So then tell me, Chewie: where do you see beauty here? Because all I see is _wet_ and _filthy_ and _evil_.”

She surveyed the scene before her, the dilapidated wall behind Han, the spice addict begging on the street to her right, the rundown mismanagement and virulent greed that seeped from the ground beneath her boots and rained from the sky above her head. No order, no justice, no equality: just pain and exploitation. 

Leia saw no beauty.

Chewie was quiet behind her and then made a low murmur she knew was his pet name for his captain. _Cub_. 

She opened her mouth, unsure if “beauty” had translated as well as she had meant. In Basic, that word had a connotation of admiration, a sense of awe, of love.

“Cub?” she said, furrowing her brow. “You think _Han_ is beautiful?”

Not that she didn’t understand the sentiment; she’d admitted to herself long ago that Han Solo was unquestionably attractive by humanoid standards. But she knew Chewie had a wife and a cub of his own and that when he growled _beauty_ to her here, it wasn’t in the context of sexual attraction. 

Chewie patted her shoulder and repeated his first sentence: [Something] _beings are worth more_.

She couldn’t track his first growl; the tone didn’t sound denigrating or belittling in the slightest. It was tempting to nod and move on, to delve deeper into what the Wookiee had meant by Han being beautiful. That was, after all, the oddest part of Chewie’s conversation thus far.

But Leia was determined to do two things: fully understand Shyriiwook and maintain the soft, kind friendship she’d developed with Chewie. And so she did the thing that made her most uncomfortable. She admitted her own lack of understanding.

“I’m sorry, Chewie. Which kind of beings? Humans?”

His bark of _no_ was clear. He paused a moment, then repeated the first growl: [Something]. _Struggle. Hard. Work-tired. Want. Need._

“Desperate?” she guessed. “ _Desperate_ beings are worth more?”

_Yes!_

His growl was so pleased, so proud, that Leia felt her mouth tug up into a rueful smile.

“More than what?” she asked, then eyed a Twi’lek as she sauntered past the cantina entrance, her clothing barely qualifying as much more than evocative scraps. 

_Full_ , he growled. _Sated. Not-want. Not-need._

“ _Desperate beings are worth more than the sated_ ,” she mused, finding purchase on his explanation. “You’re better if you’re hungry?”

_Ridiculous_ , she thought. _Everyone deserves to have food, water, shelter._

But then she reconsidered. Wookiee proverbs rarely operated on a literal plane: it was the reason it had taken her the better part of eighteen months to get this far in her comprehension. Shyriiwook was the most nonliteral language she’d ever studied; vexation with the dialect had set in about two minutes after she’d begun learning it. 

So not literal hunger, then. A more abstract kind of hunger.

Her thoughts turned to the legion of Alliance recruits, the disenfranchised aliens, oppressed women, poor and malnourished beings who flocked into their ranks to find something to live for besides their next meal. Her own thirst for justice for her people, her parents, her culture. Luke’s desperation for a family, a community to call his own, to be worthy of his new-found notoriety and fame.

Hungry? Yes. They were all _that_ kind of hungry. 

_Beauty lies in deep waters, not shallow pools._ She’d always taken her mother’s phrase to heart, choosing to find the gem of virtue in beings until she knew their mettle. Chewie was truly noble beneath the angry-sounding growls and imposing stature. Luke was unbelievably brave beneath his outside naivete. And she was far more broken than she let on, her outer beauty a facade to fool others. The softness of her face belied the angry rot beneath her skin, crumbling that same beauty from the inside-out.

Across the street Han shifted, bending his right knee to place his boot against the wall. 

Desperate? Yes. There was a sort of gangly, unruly desperation about him. Rangey hunger. Insatiation. A sense that he was poised to attack at any moment. What made him so maddening to her was that she couldn’t figure out what he despaired for. What ambition, what inner fire, what horrible memory or grand hope made him this way? She had absolutely no clue.

_Desperate beings are worth more than the sated._

And then Han looked right at her, clear-cut and striking, and Leia sucked in a breath, her dual desires to know his body and his mind meeting in a thrill of narrow, pinpoint thread. It wrapped around him, tugged him closer to her. She blinked but the thread wasn’t cut. Unimaginably strong, vital … 

… and imaginary. Or at the very least one-sided. 

“Wookiees are very wise,” she murmured to her companion as she held Han’s eyes, frozen and overheated at once. 

Chewie growled softly behind her: untranslatable. Encouragement? No. Nothing so presumptuous. Just a low sound of kindness, like an audible bump of shoulders. Commiseration. Pity.

To Leia it sounded like fruitless hoping. She refocused on the task at hand.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Han, however, was focused on something else entirely. 

This mission, this _fucking nightmare_ of a mission, was a shitshow of feelings. Feelings like road hazards, like atmospheric debris. Every single feeling he had to his name—and he’d never known how capable of feelings he’d been until he’d met the kid and the princess—was firing on full power. Thrusters burning. Liftoff and lightspeed and go. 

He didn’t want to be here. And if he had to be here, he didn’t want Leia to be here with him. And if she absolutely _had_ to be here, he didn’t want her anywhere near the Hutts. 

And yet here they were. On Nar Shaddaa. 

He glanced to his left, across the street from his alley, and eyed his copilot as he towered over the tiny dynamo princess. Chewie’s eyes tracked him and the Wookiee nodded with a sly look, trying to tell Han that he had Leia under control.

Han snorted to himself. _Under control_ , he thought. _Right._

It wasn’t possible to keep Leia under control. Chewie would be just as capable of harnessing a comet with his bare paws. She burned too bright, her trajectory durasteel strong. And she was the most stubborn person he’d ever met. At best, the Wookiee could hope to tackle her to the ground before she got too far, but even that was doubtful. Han had seen Leia’s skills in hand-to-hand combat drills. 

Underestimating Leia was the kind of fatal mistake idiots made. And neither Han nor Chewie were idiots.

When she’d approached them about this mission, he’d laughed out loud. _Nar Shaddaa_ , he’d sputtered. _You want us to take you to Nar Shaddaa? Why the hell would we do that?_

She’d lifted an eyebrow. _You’ve flown me from one side of this galaxy to the other, and this is your hard line? The Great Han Solo?_

__

__

_Yeah,_ he’d said, point-blank and hard. _Nar Shaddaa is my hard line. Whatever business you have there, you can find it somewhere else._

__

__

_Not this_ , she’d said, jutting her chin up like a pro. _And not for this price. It’s Nar Shaddaa or nothing._

__

__

_Then it’s nothing_ , he’d said, confident he could get her to back down. 

She’d nodded, the picture of innocence, and then took a step back. _Very well. I’ll ask Vel. She’ll be happy to take me._

Han knew he was being played. He _knew_ it. And he still couldn’t help his reaction. 

_Vel!_ He’d sputtered the name like a curse. Vel doesn’t have a clue about Nar Shaddaa! She’ll get you both killed.

Lieutenant Ardya Vel was a good pilot but hailed from the same kind of upper-crust, fancy culture Leia had and Han could just imagine what critical mistakes two such blue-bloods would make. It didn’t matter how smart, how capable, they were; Nar Shaddaa would chew them up and spit them back out again if they weren’t careful. Leia was downright reckless when she got close to what she wanted. He plain didn’t trust her in situations like that.

The firebrand in front of him had shrugged. _Vel isn’t assigned to a scouting mission. A pilot is a pilot. If you won’t fly me, I’m sure she would be happy to do so._

Oh, this woman would be the death of him. A pilot is a pilot? In what universe was the best choice for a jaunt to the Smuggler’s Moon whoever was just hanging around? Whoever wasn’t already busy? Did Leia have any idea, any idea whatsoever, how dangerous Nar Shaddaa would be for her?

_A pilot is a—you go tell that to Darklighter or Porkins and see just what any old pilot can do for you,_ he’d shouted. 

He winced to think of that now. But as usual when it came to Leia, Han’s brain short-circuited. She was the most infuriating .... smart-mouthed … _stubborn_ ...

And, deeper—so much deeper than he was willing to acknowledge, deeper than he could possibly want or comprehend—he’d wanted her to say, unequivocally, that she wanted him and only him. Because he was the fittest man for the job, that he could do what no one else could, that she trusted him without reservation. That there was no one else she wanted: just him, _only him_ , for as long as he could stay. 

To fly her to Nar Shaddaa, of course. Not for any other reason.

_Sure, pal_ , he’d thought to himself. _No other reason than that._

Hell, he couldn’t even convince himself of that last point. 

The woman in question had eyed him carefully after his outburst, and Han could see the gears in her head working at a double-time pace. This was becoming a kind of routine, this back-and-forth between them. There was friendship lurking beneath the surface; Han knew that. And lurking even further below that was a simmering connection that they both tried to ignore. In moments like this one, Han knew with absolute certainty that the connection between them was rising to the surface, that someday soon someone would slip up and admit how they felt.

And so he egged her on. He pushed her buttons. Because, though he would never admit it, he was ravenous for the moment when he’d get to see, firsthand and with total reciprocity, that she was just as affected by him as he was by her. 

_Captain Solo_ , she had begun. _Her voice was low, smokey: like women in cantinas with provocative lips and come-hither eyes. Will you take me or not?_

She meant to Nar Shaddaa. He knew that.

But the simmering had turned into a boil, flicks of tempered water licking his throat, itching to say what he really wanted. _Take you?_ He’d wanted to laugh. _Honey, I’d take you in a second. It’d be so good, so real, and you—you’d_ wreck _me. Sweetheart, there’s nothing I want more—_

But he hadn't said any of that out loud.

Before he’d known it, he’d coughed out a _yes_. And that had been that. His name on the docket, his ship in the crosshairs.

What he’d told Chewie was true: he didn’t anticipate any trouble with Jabba here. Hutt politics were worse on Nar Shaddaa than on Coruscant. At least everyone in Imperial City knew who the boss was. Every Hutt with a credit to his name thought they were owed a neighborhood on Nar Shaddaa and a spice supplier. And because the Hutt lifespan was a cool millennium, murder was the only way to eat up someone else’s slice of the pie. The smart ones bided their time, waiting in the safety of their own fortresses, as Jabba was doing, for someone else to kill off their largest competitors.

And Leia wasn’t a liability in the traditional sense. He had full faith that if things got rough, the princess would take out her blaster and get busy on the double. But she also had vulnerable spots—usually the vulnerable themselves—and there were millions of vulnerable beings on this planet. He’d already caught her eyeing the spice addict on the corner with _that look_ in her big doe eyes. Danger was going to find them on this planet and he suspected it was going to find them because Leia tried to rescue somebody. 

He turned to look at Leia and Chewie again. The two were deep in conversation; he could see their mouths moving, could see Chewie gesturing in wide circles. The big lug looked insane, fur flying and bowcaster rattling around on his shoulder. 

Han rolled his eyes and settled back against the wall. This fucking mission was gonna kill them all. He just knew it. 

______________________________________________________________________________

Three hours later, Han kicked off his wall, checked the street to make sure no one was watching him and then made his way back to Leia and Chewie. 

“Do you believe me now?” she asked when he got within earshot. “This is a clean deal.”

“Ain’t no such thing with the Hutts.”

She rolled her eyes. “I did my research. We’re as safe as we’re ever going to be.”

Han had a few replies to that statement that he refrained from saying aloud, only because if he got her yelling someone might come looking for them. Pickpockets or slavers: anyone who might exploit a woman in danger for their own gain. It was amazing how Nar Shaddaa seeped into your bones like that. 

“Can you man the cams from here?” he asked Chewie instead, eyeing the Wookiee’s bag full of surveillance equipment. 

Chewie whuffed an affirmative and Han nodded to his first mate, a private signal to take the surveillance duty seriously. Then he turned to the princess, put his hands on his hips and considered her for a good five seconds.

“What?” she asked, crossing her arms over her chest. 

“You’re gonna stick out like a sore thumb in there. We need to dirty you up some.”

Leia made a face. “ _Dirty me up?_ I’m with you, aren’t I?”

In any other scenario Han would have taken the bait; the temptation to rile her up was nearly unbearable. She was always so fun to flummox, to make angry. Her sputtered shock, the way her lips pursed, into a furious pout, the blood that rushed into her cheeks when she really got going ….

Unfortunately his suggestion to dirty her up hadn’t been facetious. 

“No one in their right mind would believe you’re a local,” he said, looking at her meticulously clean fingernails, the unscarred perfection of her face, her beautiful eyes. “”Whaddya think, pal?”

Chewie growled. _Have care, Cub. She’s scared._

Leia, scared? He wanted to laugh. “Yeah, yeah,” he said as if in agreement, sneaking a look at Leia to see if she’d understood what Chewie had said. “I think you’re right.”

“Right about what?” she asked, her eyes making circuits between Han and Chewie. 

_You could do much damage to Little Princess_ , Chewie barked. _And you love her—_

“Off-world fuck,” Han interrupted, praying to every deity in Corellian lore that Leia’s Shyriiwook comprehension hadn’t progressed enough to interpret _that_ little slip of Chewie’s. “Easiest way to blend you in.”

“I don’t need to be your…. Your….. _That_ ,” she sputtered. “I can blend in just fine on my own.”

Han lifted an eyebrow, pointing out without words that she couldn’t even say _fuck_. “Unless you can de-royal yourself in a hot minute, offworld fuck is our best bet.”

Her eyes slid to the side, her jaw set, her hand clenching into a fist at her side. She was pissed, sure as anything, but Han knew Leia would never do anything so blatantly stupid as argue with him about mission security. And playing her off as anything _but_ an offworld fuck would make things much harder for all of them. 

He knew this place. She didn’t. 

A tense beat and then she nodded, reluctance stamped over her face. “Fine,” she said. “I can be your spacer trash girlfriend. But if you try anything, I will kill you with my bare hands.”

The image of Leia in combat drills came to Han’s mind again, the way exertion brought color to her face, the way her hair escaped from its braid like a living thing freed from a cage. Blunt, naked adoration blew through him, laced with the webbing of fierce respect. She _could_ kill him with her bare hands. 

“Understood,” he said, nodding once, and then reached his hand out for her to take.


	4. The Intermediary

_The Golden Hand_ had a decent air filter, an oddly-generous bartender and a floor littered with refuse and standing water. Dim light speckled the cantina’s main floor, leaving recesses where Leia assumed most of the criminal activity occurred. The general environment felt oddly jovial compared to the bleakness of its exterior; here the climate was controlled, here one could find consumables, here the patrons were getting an honest trade: credits for product. 

In a weird way, she could understand the appeal.

“You take me to the nicest places,” she said in a fair approximation of a simper. 

Han looked startled at her voice, squeezed her hand. “Anything for you, sweetheart.”

She almost smiled. Despite his bravado, she sensed that Han wasn’t entirely comfortable with the act, either. They’d played the part of lovers before—were quite good at it, in fact—but this time felt different, felt like the stakes were higher. Things could go very wrong very fast; it felt like a weight in the air, dragging heavily across her skin like a rake. 

They found an open booth across from the cantina entrance, far enough away for a good sight line but close enough for a hasty exit if they needed one. Han stopped short of sitting and gestured for Leia to precede him, giving her the kind of look that told her there would be no discussion on the matter.

Leia narrowed her eyes and slid into the booth, hyper-aware that the typical kind of woman in her position— _off-world fuck_ , he’d called her, and that was so _ugh_ that it made her want to wipe that smug grin off his face—wouldn’t argue or cause a fuss. The cracked leather scraped against Leia’s pant legs as she sat, the sound aged and rough. Han raised a finger to signal a waitress and then slid smoothly into the booth next to her, blocking her view of the cantina floor. Leia had a strong urge to dig her elbow into his side.

“You’re lucky there are witnesses around,” she murmured under her breath. “I can’t see a thing.”

Han turned a bright smile on her and she fought down the rush of heat in her body. “I _am_ lucky,” he agreed. “No complaints. No royal tantrums. It’s a great day.”

“Tantrums?” she repeated, offended. 

Tantrums. Like a child; like an entitled brat. She hated that anyone, least of all this man, could think of her like that. 

“You heard me,” he said. “Stay in character, baby; you can’t cause a scene.”

She exhaled in an angry hiss. “You aren’t _required_ to be annoying at all times. You could at least try to choose your words carefully.”

“I could,” he agreed, turning to look at the waitress slinking toward their booth. “But you make the other way a lot more fun.”

Leia pressed her tongue against the inside of her cheek, biting down the instinct to roll her eyes, and ordered a Gizer ale she didn’t intend to drink. She shifted her hips, uncomfortable, and accidentally bumped her left shoulder against Han’s arm. He turned away from his examination of the bar to give her a knowing look. 

“Is this place offending your refined taste?” he quipped, sliding his arm behind her shoulders and casually resting it on the uppermost edge of the booth. “You aren’t used to slumming it.”

He was warm next to her; Leia felt torn between wanting more and wanting less of his heat.

“ _You_ offend my refined taste. The smoke in here is offending my refined lungs.”

He leaned against the high back of the booth: the picture of casual indifference. “It ain’t so bad.”

“Not so bad?” she asked. “There’s a layer of cigarillo smoke clogging my lungs, my shoes are completely drenched with fetid water and I’m about five seconds away from ripping your arm out of its socket if you keep _touching me_ like that.”

His fingers stilled on the tip of her shoulder for a slow moment, then curled around her upper arm, pulling her flush to his side and pressing his lips against her left temple. 

“C’mon, baby, get dirty with me,” he murmured into her hair, low and promising and so baldly sexual that she closed her eyes and parted her lips.

For a brief moment Leia’s brain exploded into fantasy, the deep timbre of his voice soaking her brain in desperate images. Like satin through fingertips, the wild flush of physical longing slid through her, stealing her breath and clouding her brain. She understood what was happening—he’d done this before and she’d faced her own naked desire for him as well—and she felt powerless to control her own reactions. 

Had this not been happening to her—if she had been hearing about such a moment from, say, her childhood friend Winter—Leia would have shaken her head and smiled. She’d say that there was nothing wrong with sexual attraction unless it got in the way of the mission at hand. She might even suggest that if Winter so clearly wanted this unnamed person, she should follow her desires and get rid of the pent-up want. _What could it hurt?_ she’d say. _If you want him and he wants you and everything is legal?_

But this was not Winter. 

“Call me _baby_ one more time and you will be leaving this planet with one less testicle than you arrived with.”

Han snorted but leaned away, giving her some space. “That’s a little harsh,” he said. “If you ruin the goods, you won’t be able to enjoy—”

“If you _value_ the goods, you’ll stop your sentence right there,” she said and lifted the Gizer to her lips to take a slow sip, eyeing him knowingly from above the bottle. 

Han flashed a bright grin and then turned to watch the bar once again, dropping his arm from around her shoulders. With the renewed space between them, Leia was able to push the hot desire from her chest. Able to breathe. Able to focus.

“So who’s this contact you’re so sure isn’t gonna kill us?” Han asked from beside her, lifting a tumbler of whiskey to his lips and eyeing the busty waitress at the bar. “What does he look like?”

“She,” Leia corrected. “Human from Nar Shaddaa. Black hair, black skin, orange eyes.”

Han made a sort of pleading sound low in his throat.

She frowned at the sudden consternation written across his face. “Well, I haven’t seen a holo of her but—”

“Captain of the _Starlight Intruder_?” he asked, then swallowed with uncharacteristic nervousness. 

“How did you … _oh, no_.”

Fury sparked in Leia’s chest, bright and hot, a wave of jealousy that teetered dangerously close to the surface. She tried to rein it in, desperate for the kind of implacable cool that Han himself often used when confronted with an unexpected development. She knew she was only partially successful. 

Of course Han had a past with her contact. _Of course_ he did. Out of the billions of beings on this rock, out of the hundreds of thousands of beings who worked as smugglers across the galaxy, the Alliance had contacted a woman who’d met Han Solo before. And based on the look on Han’s face—his tight jaw, the look of dread in his eyes, the way his mouth scrunched up to one side—there was a sordid history between the two.

Han hit his head against the back of the booth a few times, closing his eyes and exhaling loudly. “Of all the fucking smugglers on this fucking moon, you hired _Salla_?”

The way he spoke the name, with shock and disbelief but also a note of fondness, made Leia’s skin crawl. Sudden images flipped through her mind’s eye, anonymous dark skin pressed against deeply-tanned hands she knew far too well. Lips pressed together. Legs threaded through each other: long, strong, beautiful. 

Instantly, Salla Zend was everything Leia Organa was not.

Leia tried valiantly to leash her jealousy but the beast roared and growled in its cage. There was no reason to react so strongly. She didn’t own Han Solo, didn’t have the kind of relationship that warranted freedom to ask about his past with Captain Zend. What was it to her? Who he slept with, who he kissed, who he loved— 

“Yes,” she answered him, holding onto her mask with a heraldic grip. “She’s smuggled for us before. Carlist says she’s very dependable.”

A low laugh: no humor. “ _Rieekan_.”

“I take it you have a past with this woman?” Leia asked, although she already knew the answer.

Han wiped a hand over his mouth and stared at the other side of the booth for a long moment. “Uh,” he finally said. “Yeah. I know her.”

 _I know her_. Leia felt her bitter jealousy rage against its strict tether but she rallied and pulled herself together. Now was not the time for pettiness or rapaciousness. As with all things, the Alliance came first. 

“Is she going to walk in here and shoot us?” she asked, only half-joking. 

“No, she’s not gonna shoot us,” he said, certain. “She’s just gonna be … _uh_. I dunno. I didn’t end it well.”

In any other situation she would have laughed. His discomfort was so strong it was like a presenting illness, worry written in the handsome depths of his eyes. Cocksuredness was a mainstay for the smuggler and here he was without it: very human, very fallable. Emotionally naked in the face of his demons. 

“How _not well_?” she asked, thinking of quick morning retreats and unanswered holo calls. 

“ _Really_ not well,” he said without elaboration.

His words echoed mysteriously in Leia’s ears until she had no choice but to either ask for clarification or simply shrug it off. And while her organized, methodical, mission-oriented brain tried to anticipate complications arising from Han’s history with Salla Zend, Leia’s secret boundless emotional energy raged and stung, heedless of logic. 

She had no right to feel … possessive? Jealous? Han and she didn’t have a romantic relationship. They were colleagues: friends, even, despite their regular fights and vastly different perspectives. Like Luke, like Wedge. Friends. 

In theory, meeting one of Luke’s ex-lovers would be amusing but not emotionally taxing; meeting an ex-lover of Han’s should feel the same. 

But jealousy did not arise from a vacuum. 

She’d tried to reason with herself: Han was physically attractive and strictly off-limits. Like all humans, she wanted what she shouldn’t have. He was her physical opposite: large to her small, rough to her soft, chaos to her control. More than once she’d reasoned that she should just let go, let him make good on all the ribald talk, surrender to the weight of this … this … _desire_. And then the spell would be broken and she could watch him leave without a sense of pending heartache.

If it had just been about sex, she probably would have followed through with it. She was no meek innocent. But the prospect of one night with Han Solo, a fleeting send-off, a satiation of an appetite like scratching a persistent itch … that didn’t appeal to her. 

Leia Organa wanted more. She didn’t know what that meant but she knew it was dangerous, and though her heart was well-guarded after the events of the past year, she was afraid Han was one of the few people in the galaxy that could find a crack in her fortress. 

And then she’d be lost. 

She would not let that happen. She had too much to do in this galaxy. Billions of beings depended on her. If her fixation on the smuggler overtook her, she would fail. And Leia would not fail. Period.

Leia bit her tongue, swallowed her jealousy and turned a glare onto her companion. “Have you slept with _everybody_ in the system or only just the moon?”

He opened his mouth to reply but shut it quickly to nod to the muted light of the cantina entrance. Leia leaned forward to see past his torso, resting her elbows on the table to get a decent look. 

“There she is,” Han said.

Beautiful dark skin gleamed in the low light, high cheekbones cutting through an oval face. Her lips were plump but devoid of color, her hair pulled up into a bun atop her head. Leia could discern a sinewy strength in the line of her arms, biceps pressing into the fabric of her shirtsleeves. Her hands were big, capable, as she gripped a blaster at her side. 

Everything about the woman screamed _power and control._

Salla Zend spotted them instantly and walked to their booth with purpose. Not with the grace of a royal princess, more swivel in her hips, but her chin was held high and her shoulders rolled back into what Leia’s tutors had called _indomitable weight_. She was a force to be reckoned with and Leia steeled herself for the coming negotiation.

“Hello there, Slick,” she said as she slipped into the booth across from them. “Fancy seeing you here.”

Han shifted forward, mirroring Leia’s position over the table. “Shoulda known you’d pick up the contract,” he said. “What’s it been, Sal? Five years?”

The newcomer nodded, a glint in her eye. “Closer to ten.”

“Huh,” Han said, wiping a hand over his mouth. “Seems like yesterday.”

Leia hated being a passive observer under even the best of circumstances; the desire to interrupt their reunion was so strong, she had to fight for an amicable, even tone. 

“Captain Zend,” Leia said with cool detachment. “Thank you for meeting with us.” 

Salla turned her focus to Leia, orange eyes narrow and cunning. Her eyes reminded the princess of a pouncing cat, feline in her stealth and sharp in her claws. 

“You must be Pearl,” Salla said to Leia. “It’s nice to put a face to a name.”

“Likewise,” Leia said at the same time as Han sucked in a breath beside her and threw her a look. 

“Pearl?” he whispered, though there was no way their contact didn’t hear him.

She shrugged, uninterested in explaining the code name to him. “Yes. And you won’t call me anything _but_ Pearl while we are here,” she instructed.

“Shoulda mentioned it before,” he said.

“I’m mentioning it _now_ ,” she said, then turned her focus to the woman on the other side of the booth. “Ignore him, please.”

Salla smiled with an easy, lofty congeniality. “Honestly, it’s the best way to work with him.”

“ _Hey_ ,” Han said. “I’m right here.”

Salla nodded but kept her gaze on Leia. “I’m happy to help our mutual friends,” she said. “Especially if you’re recruiting good mercs like Slick here.”

“I’m hired, not recruited,” Han said, false mulishness edging his tone. 

Leia turned to look at him, sitting close to her, his thigh pressing against hers. She felt mollified by Captain Zend’s general pleasantness. Her jealousy hushed into a simmer, and now she was utterly enthralled by the new dynamic before her. Fascinated, like an anthropologist studying an alien culture. 

Han Solo and his past: what a novel opportunity this was! At best, he was a pixelated monstrosity of adventure and misdeed; he had to have amassed a collection of people, beings he knew, admired, betrayed. Loved, even. 

Salla leaned forward into the low light. “Targeter said you could be trusted.”

Leia didn’t immediately reply, trying to read the smuggler in front of her as she would have a political opponent. “Targeter does good work for our mutual friends.”

Better than good work, actually. Targeter, though an unidentified covert agent funnelling intel to the Alliance from across the galaxy, had done systematic and widespread damage to small enclaves of the Empire. He or she was also responsible for Carlist’s recommendation of Salla Zend for this particular brokerage: apparently Zend and Targeter had worked together before.

Leia hadn’t asked for details, trusting that Carlist would never put her to unnecessary risk. If he trusted Targeter, then she trusted Targeter. And Targeter trusted Zend. In a galaxy that thrived on chaos, where Leia could trust very few people with her life, she would take recommendations from her confidantes without question. 

“Does your client have the merchandise?” Leia asked.

Salla sighed and leaned back. “My client has the merchandise, alright. The question is if he will sell it to you.”

“We agreed on thirty thousand,” Leia said. “With coordinates and a clean getaway. That was the deal.”

“The deal changed,” Salla said.

Leia had assumed the Hutts would make further demands. Carlist had assured her that the only designation for the Alliance that Salla had given the Hutts was _mutual friends_ , that they didn’t actually know to whom the heaters were going. This lessened—though certainly didn’t abolish—the possibility that the Hutts would sell them out to the Empire. And while the designation was an outright lie—the Alliance was no friend to the Hutts, slave-traders as they were—Leia was soothed by Salla’s renegotiation efforts. The Hutts would always press their advantage if they could. 

She’d negotiated with hundreds of species before and secondary agreements were always a part of it. Hopefully this was a sign that Salla had succeeded in keeping her “friends” a secret from her employers for the time being. 

But Leia would show none of that. She knew she often appeared small, young and naive. She’d long ago learned to use such misconceptions to her advantage. 

“You can’t change the deal,” she said. “Our cred is only authorized for thirty thousand.”

“Then our friends didn’t prepare you well enough,” Salla shot back. “And I think you’re lying about that.”

Leia cocked an eyebrow but didn’t otherwise respond.

“You’re a better negotiator than that, _Pearl_ ,” Salla said, then lowered her voice. “I’ve seen you debate in your past life.”

Leia regarded the woman, even as she felt Han stiffen beside her. She could tell he was about to jump into the conversation; his defensiveness triggered by the sly threat that undershone Salla’s words. Without thinking Leia reached out her left hand and squeezed his knee, warning him to stay quiet. 

She had this under control. 

“If that’s true, then you know I get what I want,” Leia said, dropping the naive act and tilting her chin back. 

“So do my clients,” Salla said.

“Your clients also buy and sell sentient beings. I think we can dismiss any of their objections with an honest payment.”

Salla sucked in a breath and a brief hush settled over the booth. Leia kept her eyes forward but could feel Han relax. Belatedly she realized she hadn’t moved her hand from his knee. Covering for her misaction, she leaned forward and clasped her hands on the table, mirroring Salla’s position. 

“Hardball,” Salla said after a moment, nodding. “I like it. What do you propose?”

Leia smiled gently. “I have thirty thousand. That’s all I can pay.”

“Sixty,” Salla countered.

“Thirty. Our friends don’t have sixty.”

“Fifty.”

Leia just shook her head. “We better go, _Slick_ ,” she said, treasuring the brief insight into whatever past Han and Salla shared. “This isn’t going anywhere.” 

“Sounds great, _Pearl_ ,” Han said. His tone sounded just as amused as hers had. “Good to see you again, Sal.”

Salla eyed their show with amusement, a wry smile quirking her lips. “Fine,” she said, as Han was scooting out of the booth. “Thirty-five and a favor.”

Han paused, reaching for Leia’s hand to help her out of the booth. “Favor?” he repeated, suspicion heavy in his voice. “For who?”

The dark woman’s smile widened, flashing white teeth. “For me. I’ll kick in an extra five thousand myself and tell my clients you paid forty.”

Instantly Leia was suspicious. “That’s terribly generous of you.”

Too generous. Carlist had faith in this woman because Targeter had faith in her, and Leia would trust Carlist with her life. But this was not in the mission brief. Leia was authorized to spend up to fifty thousand on this deal; she’d never dreamed she could keep the Hutts down to thirty-five. 

But this favor was a wrench in the plans. Carlist hadn’t known about it; at least, she assumed he hadn’t or he would have warned her ahead of time. 

“The favor is worth five thousand to me. And now that I know Solo is here to help, I am happy to compensate. Everyone wins.”

Leia chanced a look at Han. His brow was furrowed, green eyes dark in the limited light of the booth. “I ain’t hauling for you, Sal,” he said, voice as dark as his eyes. “Jabba’s got a bounty on me. I take one step on the spice routes and I’m a dead man.”

Salla rolled her eyes. “Nothing like that. I need a thief. My ex pawned my guild badge from the battle. Stole it right out of my cabin.”

 _Guild badge?_ Leia was lost. What was so valuable about a guild badge?

“Steal it yourself,” Han groused. “I’m no thief.”

But Leia was already in negotiation mode. If she could save the Alliance fifteen thousand credits—? “Do you know where your ex took it?”

“ _Pearl_ ,” Han growled.

“She pawned it. A splicer bought it downtown—a real bleeding revolutionary, Pearl here would love him—but because he’s a splicer, he’s got all this advanced tech set-up. I can’t breach it.”

“And if we get the badge, you’ll release the coordinates of our merchandise for thirty-five thousand?” Leia asked.

“ _Pearl_ ,” Han said, louder.

“I’ll take you there myself,” Salla said. “We can even take the _Fal_ \- uh … your ride. A good faith showing so you know you aren’t jumping into a trap.”

“No,” Han sputtered. “No, no, no. C’mon, Your Worship. We need to go.”

But Leia was already running risk calculations. The trickiest part of the original deal, the part that had made her the most uneasy, was that Salla Zend would provide coordinates for the heaters. It had seemed like a barely-concealed trap. The smuggler could send them to an ambush; she could send them to an Imperial nest; she could send them into a star for all Leia knew. There were a lot of ways to die from a set of bad coordinates. 

But _this_ , putting Salla in just as much danger as Han and Leia, seemed like a good idea. And while it sounded like the badge might require some work, Han and Chewie had the experience and skills. To save that large of a sum, Leia would gladly steal a badge from a splicer. Especially one stationed here on Nar Shaddaa. 

Leia stuck out her hand. “You have a deal.”

Salla smiled, a wide grin splitting her face. “Excellent,” she said. “Follow me.”


	5. Salla

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Trigger warning: mention of torture in this chapter._

Salla led Han and Leia out of _The Golden Hand_ with terrific speed. The mildew-and-cigarillo-smoke air whipped past Leia’s face as they crossed the cantina floor and through the main entrance. She sniffed but fought for an unaffected expression, pressing her hand to the holster on her hip, checking for the reassuring shape of her blaster at her side. 

The open air of the bustling street hit her with surprising force, the brown-tinged rain pouring to the ground while pedestrians continued their work unaffected. The half-clad Twi’lek from earlier nearly bumped into Leia, almost a foot taller than the princess and possessing no sense of personal space whatsoever. A waft of cheap perfume accompanied her like a wave of assumed confidence and sexual attraction. 

“Don’t look down,” the Twi’lek said, not unkindly. “He doesn’t want her. Look _up_.”

And without another word she moved on, rolling her hips in that hypnotizing infinity-sign shape that Leia had begun to recognize as a uniquely feminine attribute on Nar Shaddaa. 

Nobody seemed terribly inconvenienced by the rain: no noticeable change in tempo or mood as the haggard begged and the speeders zoomed. Leia tried to duck her nose into the thin collar of her crew jacket but realized her sight was compromised. Any pickpocket worth his salt would target her and while she wasn’t carrying anything valuable, she had no desire to bring attention to herself. 

_Nothing for it, I guess_ , she thought.

With a heavy breath, she brought her chin up, accepting that her hair and clothes were a lost cause. Instead of considering the rain too carefully, she focused on emulating the two smugglers ahead of her.

They made it look so easy.

Salla held her chin high, sweeping her gaze from left to right in what Leia eventually deduced was a habitual pattern: an adapted 180 degree radar. Her boots splashed into puddles with a masculine kind of disinterest, the rain nothing in her wake. The arch of her back—shoulders rolled, rib cage forward, middle vertebrae swayed—foretold confidence in a way that Leia could manage with her voice but not her body. 

And Han, scant centims taller than Salla, with his lethargic edge: chin lowered, arms loose at his sides, the slight lean in his posture that purported ease but hid deadly efficiency and indurate capability. His head didn’t turn but Leia could imagine his eyes making their broad strokes across the scene. 

Ever the strategic collector, Leia filed the information away, desperate to consider herself anything but the liability Han thought she was on this mission. 

As the only member of their trio without legs the length of brakva tree trunks, Leia struggled to keep up, fuming to herself about genetics and the plight of the petite human female. The gravel of the unpaved street shifted under her boots, the sound grating on her already frayed nerves as she struggled to keep up with Han and Salla. 

“Should we pick up your Wook?” Salla asked, loud and clear to anyone in range. “Might get a bit lonely in that alley.”

Leia pressed her lips together, striving to maintain her composure in the face of such bold disrespect to their security. Chewie was well-hidden. Even if Salla had spotted him before she’d entered the cantina, there was no reason to broadcast his presence to anyone within earshot. The smuggler had single-handedly insured that Chewie’s position was ruined. 

It was difficult to suppress the automatic instinct to distrust Salla when she brought Chewie’s safety into question, but Leia tried. She filed away the twinge of unease and sidestepped a puddle, thinking: _she will save you fifteen thousand credits._

“He’ll kill me if we don’t,” Han said, shrugging and unimpressed with Salla’s observational skills. “He’s got a soft spot for this one here.”

“Excuse me,” Leia said, imperious. “I have a name.”

Han’s voice was deadpan, dull and bored. “Fine. He’s got a soft spot for Ruby here. Or Diamond. Uh. Sapphire. Whatever.”

“ _Pearl_ ,” Leia muttered to herself. 

She should probably pull him aside at some point and explain the code name; probably should have already done so. She knew he wouldn’t have used it against her if he’d known its history. _Mission security_ , she thought. _He has a right to know if it’s going to put you in an emotional fit every time he mocks it._

Salla laughed: turned a soft smile toward Leia. “ _Chewie_ has a soft spot for you?” she asked. “Really?”

“They’re thick as thieves,” Han said with grand annoyance. “He’s got a hell of a taste in humans.”

“How did it fail him so spectacularly with you?” Leia asked, voice splendidly even as she hurried to keep up with them. 

Salla laughed. “I could barely get Chewie to notice me when I was in the room. Always figured he just didn’t like females. You’re a lucky woman, Pearl.”

Before either Han or Leia could respond, Salla veered a sharp right and navigated with quick efficiency toward the stakeout alley that Leia had shared with Chewie not two hours before. Her long legs splattered the nearby ground with rainwater as her boots hit the gravel and Leia grimaced to notice the bun on top of her head start to wilt to the side. 

Leia blinked and caught up to Han. “Talk about a taste in humans,” she muttered as she brushed his arm with her shoulder. 

Han blew out his breath. “You have no idea.”

She rolled her eyes and moved to follow Salla. The swollen sky opened into an outright downpour, dumping water onto every available surface and ricocheting into the air with heavy _pings_. Disgusted, Leia broke into a jog, seeking the shelter of the alley walls and the enormous bulk of the Wookiee. Her boots slid on the increasingly wet gravel and the brown… the brown was _everywhere_ : in her hair, eyes, lips, mouth. 

Chewie huffed a low snicker at her expression—she could hear him as Han and she passed through the alley mouth—and Leia sighed as she pressed herself against the wall next to the Wookiee. From high above her, Chewie roared a general greeting to Salla and Leia could hear the note of surprise beneath the growl. 

“Nice to see you again, Chewie,” Salla said. “How’ve you been?”

_I am well_ , he growled, with a slight nod. _I did not see you enter the cantina._

Salla frowned and turned to Han for clarification while Leia felt Chewie’s paw settle on her opposite shoulder, pulling her against him to shield her from the rain. Grateful, she turned a smile to him and winked. 

“He didn’t see you come into the cantina,” Han translated. “And he says that if you knew he was here, why didn’t you let him see you enter? If you’re on the up-and-up and all?”

Both Leia and Chewie turned to look at Han and Leia realized that she hadn’t needed him to translate Chewie’s words, that she’d gotten the gist of his sentiment, that Han had expounded on the original words with a heavy flair. It appeared this was a regular occurrence with these two.

She would have to be careful.

Salla put a hand on her hip and addressed Chewie. “I’m not trying to double-cross you, Chewie. Pearl can tell you. This is a straight deal.”

_Pearl?_ Chewie rumbled. 

“Your best friend, there,” Han said. “The only person you listen to anymore. Apparently we’re going by pretend names now.”

Leia was amused at the note of … was that jealousy? … in his voice, as if she could supercede Han in the Wookiee’s good graces. The idea was laughable, of course, and was probably a product of Han’s anxiety. His tell. A sign of the danger they were in.

But still. Amusing. 

_I trust Pearl_ , Chewie growled. _I do not know if I trust you yet._

A tense beat of silence as the imposing Wookiee eyed Salla and Han with a knowing look. Leia was nearly overcome with the desire to ask Chewie, right then and there, how Han had ended his relationship with Salla and what she had done to earn his tight stare. 

Wild speculation could wait, though, and this was certainly not the time. If only because the rain was becoming a full-blown monsoon by the look and feel of it. Even shielded by Chewie’s arms, water fell into Leia’s eyes, down her face, drenching her shirt and trousers. Visibility was down to ten meters at most. They were in exposed territory. They needed to move.

“I trust her,” Leia breathed. “Trust _me_ , Chewie.”

In the storm, sheltered by his massive frame, Leia felt a flicker of warmth in her chest, a bundled nestle of friendship and adoration for the being next to her. 

_Hell of a taste in humans_ , Han had said. 

She pressed her hand into the fur on Chewie’s back, a friendly pressure, expressing gratitude that he wanted to protect them, that he was her friend, that he was sheltering her from the rain even as his fur was becoming drenched, too. 

Chewie made a soft, congenial sound and then barked: _Then what_ is _the plan? And does it involve getting Little Princess out of the rain?_

“Yeah,” Han nodded, throwing water everywhere. “Where to, Sal?”

Salla smiled: bright, beautiful. Authentic. “I have a secure place up north a bit. In the Shocks.”

Han cocked an eyebrow. “ _How_ secure? Like that dive on Ryloth? Because I sure as hell ain’t hauling all your asses out of a swamp.” He paused. “Again.”

Leia was overcome by curiosity but suppressed it in favor of a more practical question. “How far?”

Salla’s eyes moved from Han to Leia before she answered Leia’s question first. “Thirty minutes by speeder. And the dive on Ryloth was your fault, not mine, Solo. Don’t think I don’t remember that.”

Han squinted into the air, obviously trying to remember, then turned a questioning look to Chewie. At the Wookiee’s nod, Han scowled and then shifted toward Leia, obviously wanting to avoid follow-up questions. 

“Whaddya say, Boss?”

_Oh, so_ now _I’m the boss?_ Leia thought, throwing Han a narrow, dry look that she hoped communicated the depth of her annoyance with his attitude. From trust to teasing to withholding: he’d run the pure gamut of the emotional spectrum so far and it was barely midday. 

But that was not important at the moment.

Leia dropped her eyes, mind flying through the options available to them. Credits to buy a speeder, at least an hour’s travel time round-trip, another two to three hours to hear more about Salla’s proposed mission. For a deal secondary to their original one? That was a lot of extra expenditure. 

But then she considered the potential gains: fifteen thousand credits brought back to the Alliance that she’d thought were as good as spent. A potentially good relationship with a reliable intermediary in Nar Shaddaa who could broker future deals. 

The opportunity to dig a little deeper into Han Solo’s past. 

And if Han had truly thought that Salla Zend would betray them, they would already be on their way to _Home One_. Leia had no doubts about that.

“We go,” she said. 

Salla nodded, pleased, and Chewie rumbled a quiet note of encouragement. Han looked unhappy but resigned, rubbing his temple with a hand dripping with brown rainwater. 

“Fine. But we take our own speeder,” he said, directing a sharp look to Salla. “And we stay within sight of it at all times.”

“Of course,” Salla said, opening her hands. “I would expect nothing less. I’ll send you the coordinates.”

Han grunted under his breath, nodding in faux excitement. “Great. Coordinates. Great.” 

“Oh, cheer up, Solo. It’ll be fine. I’ll even throw you a bone and give you a hint on where to find a decent speeder around here.”

_We can handle that_ , Chewie rumbled. _We only need the coordinates._

“We’re good,” Han translated, though Salla looked like she’d understood Chewie. “I know a guy.”

“If you’re heading to Xaltro, you should know that he’s dead,” Salla warned. “Troskl, too. Things have been heating up around here lately and you’ve been gone for a spell, Slick.”

Han paused and Leia almost asked what had happened to these two beings. The stories Han had told her about the players on Nar Shaddaa were macabre and fascinating. He’d once mentioned a woman he’d known out here, a medic who had stood outside of cantinas at the end of the cycle with her med pack and waited for fights to break out. She’d stand in plain sight of the fighters and say nothing to dissuade them. And then after the fight she’d offer her services for a favor.

_Sweet deal_ , Han had said. _Get patched up quick for a favor? It’s a hard offer to refuse in the moment you need it._

She collected these favors like they were Farsorian fire gems: categorically entering them into the datapad on her arm. Some were paid with credits. But some were paid with access to the crime lords, with influence and conversations and whispered reminders that they owed her their lives. All of it held secure in her armband datapad, waiting for collection. 

Her web of influence had been spun with incredible speed; within two years, she owned enough blackmail material to control the local crime lord, Grouka the Hutt, three times over. She’d managed to have a stake in Grouka’s glitterstim operation, his most profitable asset. She was the largest fish in the pond, and they all knew it.

And then one day she’d walked past an addict, one who owed her a considerable debt, and he stabbed her in the stomach with a vibroknife. As she slowly died from a treatable injury, ghastly pale and bleeding, the addict commed Grouka. Within minutes the Hutt’s entire entourage was congregated on the street with medical supplies in hand: bacta and mentlil and a host of other items, all of which could have easily saved her life. 

But they just stood there.

As she pleaded for help—just a painkiller, just something to stem the flow of blood and viscera spilling from her wound—Grouka and his minions watched. She begged, cried, offered everything she had to her name, renounced her small empire in the face of her own mortality as she had done to countless others. And still they just watched. For hours. 

_Did you see this happen yourself?_ she’d asked, horrified. 

_Nah_ , he’d said. _Not my scene. But that’s the kind of shit you see in Nar Shaddaa. That’s how it goes. You’re born, you cheat, you die._

“That’s too bad,” Han said. Leia shook her head to clear the old conversation from her mind, the not-so-muted horrors. “Troskl was good people. But I got someone else. We’ll be fine.”

Salla smiled. “Alright then. I’ll see you there in, what, three hours? Four? If you’re going to see Cralkym, it’ll take you at least—”

“It’s not Cralkym and you can stop trying to get me to tell you their name,” Han said, stepping away from his alley wall and gesturing broadly for Salla to leave. “Goodbye, Sal.”

Salla’s smile turned into a smirk as she waved her fingers and turned to the alley mouth. “Alright. Good luck, then. I’ll see you in an hour.”

She stepped into the street, her dark hair a sodden mess and her thin shirt soaked through by the rain, but her confident smile seemed to come through the back of her head as she slipped into the crowd of beings. 

Leia waited until Salla had disappeared entirely, then turned an expectant look to Han. “Who has a speeder for us? And how much will they want for it?”

Han shared a weighted look with Chewie, then winced when he turned back to Leia. “Xaltro.”

Leia looked from Han to Chewie and back to Han again, unsure if she’d heard him correctly. “I thought Salla said Xaltro was dead?”

“Yeah,” Han said, leaning back against his alley wall and tapping his thigh with a hand. “That’s a problem.”

Leia dropped the back of her head against Chewie’s arm, pleading with the Force, the goddess, _whoever_ , for the patience to deal with this man. 

______________________________________________________________________________________________________ 

The solution presented itself in the form of grand theft landspeeder.

Han and Chewie, oblivious to Leia’s moral discomfort, prowled the streets near their alley, looking for whatever it was they looked for when stealing someone else’s property. Leia hung back as they worked, within sight and sound of their efforts, and practiced her local aesthetic mimicry. Rolling her shoulders back, lowering her chin from its regal elevation, she paced back and forth along the block. 

It felt wrong. She felt hunched and obvious in her efforts, But Leia Organa did not quit. Ever.

On her third pass by the designated speeder—focusing on Zend’s curious hip-swivel—Leia heard a _crunch_ and a Wookiee growl of triumph.

“That’ll do it,” Han said. “C’mon, Pearl. Time to end the beauty pageant over there.”

Leia scowled but dropped the act and hurried to the speeder. “Not a pageant,” she muttered in his direction. “I’m trying to _at least_ manage to be an on-world fuck.”

Han burst into laughter as he slid into the backseat of the speeder. “Well, look at that, Chewie. Pearl’s got a mouth on her after all.”

Chewie growled, already settled in the driver’s seat. _Some of us already knew that, Cub._

Leia hopped into the speeder’s front passenger seat and turned to glare at the smuggler behind her. “I guess you don’t know everything about women yet,” she said.

Then she turned around and prepared for the journey ahead of them, Han’s laughter renewed in the seat behind her.


	6. The Outer Shocks

“Another klick,” Han said, looking at his datapad and then out the speeder’s clear weather-barrier, frowning.

The district where Salla had sent them was not one Han had ever seen before. He’d mostly stuck to the areas right outside the spaceport, and since he’d never actually lived on this moon, he hadn’t had cause to visit any of the settlements outside of the main Hutt-controlled areas. He’d been here for his contacts, for jobs and for Salla for a spell. Not to sightsee.

He sure as hell hadn’t missed any of it in the past year and a half. Alliance bases might be uglier than fuck, but the rebels at least kept them smelling decent most of the time.

The rain had stopped ten minutes into their journey but the wind made the weather-barrier necessary, whipping Leia’s hair and Chewie’s fur into twin furies. And as the spaceport district receded behind them, the environment had grown steadily shabbier: buildings in disrepair, pedestrians haggard and thin, the air heavy. While nothing looked obviously different between the Outer Shocks and the rest of Nar Shaddaa—tall buildings, green clouds, grit and grime everywhere—this goddamned area made Han furious. 

He’d done his best to avoid the Shocks every time he’d found himself on Nar Shaddaa. The slave settlement was famous for its proximity to the East Nar Shaddaa spaceport district and for the pillars of shock wands that encircled it. Slaves were outfitted with a receiver chip embedded under the skin of their upper back near enough to humanoid spinal cords to pose a mortal risk. If a slave tried to leave the settlement for any reason other than relocation to a new owner, the shock wands sent an electrical charge through the chip. Rumor had it the end result was grisly and fatal.

The Shocks were an open secret around here: everyone knew _where_ they were and _what_ they were but no one bothered to care. You kept your nose clean and kept yourself out of the Shocks. You didn’t fuck with anyone higher up in the spice chain than you or piss off the wrong person, and you’d be fine. The poor bastards in the Shocks weren’t usually people who’d worked for the Hutts; they were part of the natural consequence of what Leia would call _an unfair socioeconomic system_. They were born into slavery and they would die in slavery. Most of them were barely considered _people_ at all. 

No free being in their right mind would come out here. 

Han grimaced and swept a hand over his mouth, glancing at Leia in the seat in front of him. Spine rigid and lips pinched, it was obvious she knew what she was seeing as they passed row after row of slave hovels. Fury radiated from her, savage hatred infused her clenched fists: the most beautiful kind of aggression he’d seen from her except for maybe when she had to say the words _Darth Vader_ out loud. 

Her anger was an old friend. He could read it like it was stamped across her forehead. She didn’t launch into a political diatribe about the economic system that benefited from slave labor. She didn’t look shocked. This wasn’t a fresh wound. Han suddenly wondered if this wasn’t the first slave settlement she’d ever visited. 

His eyes flicked to Chewie and then returned to Leia.

“I can’t do anything for these people,” she murmured. To herself: certainty heartbreakingly apparent in her voice. He didn’t think she knew she’d said it out loud.

And her voice was so pained, so angry and hopeless, that he said exactly what he thought for once: no smuggler act, no braggadacio. “You already are, Leia.”

No nicknames. No sarcasm. Because one of the few things in the galaxy they openly agreed on was the buying and selling of sentient beings. No one had that right. _No one_. It was the reason Han had saved Chewie, the reason he’d been court-martialed from the Imperial Navy.

He’d ruined his best chance for redemption from his orphan childhood because of this very belief and he had never, _never_ , regretted making that decision. 

She turned her head to look at him, incredible eyes wide and enormous, and then returned to staring out the barrier. “It’s not enough.”

Chewie glanced at Han and then turned back to the speeder’s controls, but his look had communicated plenty. As if Chewie could love Leia Organa any more than he already did; as if that look hadn’t reminded Han that when not in her presence, Chewie had begun referring to her as _your mate_ in every conversation they had.

Furball thought it was funny, Han supposed. 

_Do you know what this favor is?_ Chewie asked, obviously trying to resolve the tense atmosphere in the speeder. _What Salla wants?_

“She wants us to steal a guild badge from a pawn broker,” Leia answered. “And, actually, I need some clarification on why a badge would be so important.”

_A guild badge? From the battle?_ Chewie whuffed.

“Yeah, pal, I think so.”

Leia blinked at Chewie, obviously awaiting more information. When it wasn’t offered, she asked, “Which battle?”

Han hated the way his copilot acted when Leia asked about uncomfortable subjects, particularly parts of his past that Han would rather forget. The Wookiee, amused, crowed. Loudly. _Do you want me to tell the story, Cub?_

Han rolled his eyes. “No thanks,” he said, then hurried to start the explanation before Chewie could do it for him. “A few years back, we did a thing and used badges to help us know who to trust. Salla had hers stolen from her. That’s all you need to know.”

“I think I should be the judge of what I need to know,” Leia said. “ _My_ mission, remember?”

She turned to give him an angry glare. There was no bite behind it, though, no teeth to her words, and Han understood that Leia wasn’t trying to pry. She was largely just … curious 

_I still have my badge. Gave it to Malla for safekeeping _. Chewie growled, rebuking. _Tell Little Princess about it. She would want to know what you did._ __

__“What did you do?”_ _

__Han cursed Chewie and his stupid language lessons; things had been so much easier when Leia couldn’t understand the Wookiee. Simpler. The two of them were compatriots now, and that was _exactly_ what Han didn’t need._ _

__“Just … a thing,” he answered, squirming. “It’s not a big deal.”_ _

__The Battle of Nar Shaddaa _had_ been a big fucking deal: famous even. There was a good chance Leia might even know of it. From what he’d heard of her life on Alderaan, she’d been political straight from the womb—er, adoption papers, at least—and the guild had scored a big victory against the Empire that day. He’d heard plenty of the Alliance fighter jockeys talking about it with hushed reverence, unknowingly discussing the battle right under the nose of the person who had engineered and led the whole assault. _ _

__But he had a feeling that if Leia knew how vital of a role he’d played in the battle—the strategy, the execution, the drills and leadership and pure guts it had taken to defeat Admiral Greelax—she’d push even harder for him to take a commission. She had no idea how hard he found it to sneer and turn away when she asked him _now_ ; how could he possibly fight back once she knew, really knew, what he had done against the Empire at Nar Shaddaa? How much he’d _liked_ it, how much he wished it was enough to cancel out the debt to Jabba? _ _

__The Battle of Nar Shaddaa had been a personal achievement, a sign of the times. The Empire had made criminals out of so many that fighting them here had felt like vindication. For Han, because the Imps had taken what he had thought was his only chance at a decent life in the stars. For Salla because Nar Shaddaa was her home and she had a right to defend her home even if she had few other rights. For Lando and Mako and Chewie and Xaverri and all the rest, because the Empire had made enemies out of so many that even the worst of the worst could unite to oppose them._ _

__But it had been Han who had taken control of the group, had found himself leading the effort. And secretly _he’d liked it_. And if Leia Organa ever found out, she’d be unstoppable. Han couldn’t stay with the Alliance—Jabba was going to find him someday and when he did Han was going to have to be alone, _period_ —but Leia, _fuck_ , Leia could make him forget why he was going in the first place. _ _

__She already did, every time she looked at him with those eyes and asked him to stay. She was dangerous; she’d get him killed._ _

__No, it was even worse than that: she could get _herself_ killed. Just through association._ _

__“Okay,” Leia said, interrupting the maudlin thought. “Fine. So this badge is a personal item. Something of worth to Salla.”_ _

___Why would she care about the badge?_ Chewie rumbled._ _

__Han shrugged. “No idea. It was just a cheap plastex thing. Wouldn’t get much on the pawn market. Wonder why the ex sold it.”_ _

__Chewie’s growl was low, wordless, tailing off into a hush. Leia was quiet, looking out the barrier and into the slave hovels that whipped past the speeder. Han thought she had checked out of the conversation, focused on the ugliness outside._ _

__But then she said, low and with the weight of experience: “You can’t put a price on personal items.”_ _

__Han snorted. “That’s _exactly_ what pawning is, sweetheart.”_ _

__“No, I mean…” she trailed off, then turned to look at him over her left shoulder. “I would give anything I have or could steal for one artifact from Alderaan. Anything.”_ _

__Han swallowed, uncomfortable and unable to look away._ _

__“The ex might have confused what Salla found important about the badge with financial worth and pawned it, hoping for a payout. But Salla keeping the badge? And wanting it back?” Leia turned away, settling into the speeder’s upholstery. “That might not be quantifiable.”_ _

__Chewie huffed an untranslatable sound of comfort and Han looked down at his comm, at the list of coordinates Salla had sent him. Leia’s pain, her loss, the nearly-tangible devastation she sometimes let slip through her tough mask: there was nothing he could do or say in response to it. It was better to keep quiet._ _

__Even smugglers, even _he_ , had a sense of human commiseration for the depth of Leia’s pain. Nothing he’d been taught. Nothing _anyone_ had been taught. And yet on the rare occasions in which she spoke of Alderaan, everyone reacted the same way. Like the entire galaxy had been sat down and told to shut the hell up and respect the woman who’d watched it happen. _ _

__The coordinates sharpened. The numbers fell into zeroes and Han broke the somber stillness to murmur, “We’re here.”_ _

________________________________________________________________________________________________________ _

__Salla’s secure spot was a slave hovel in the middle of a row of slave hovels smack-dab in the center of a slave-hovel settlement. The duracrete wasn’t in disrepair, at least, but Han could spot three or four serious problems with the foundations of the building where Salla met them, leaning against a door jamb: one foot crossed over the other and lips turned up into a familiar, cocky smirk. She’d changed out of her wet clothes from earlier and her hair was out of the bun, bursting from her head like a living thing freed._ _

__“Hey there, Slick,” Salla shouted over the speeder’s engine. “You’re right on time.”_ _

__Han grunted under his breath as Chewie deactivated the weather-barrier. The wind immediately found purchase in Leia’s hair, whipping loose tendrils from her braid and making the princess scowl. Han hopped out of the back seat of the speeder, offering a hand._ _

__And, predictably, she rejected him, launching herself from the idling speeder and cocking an eyebrow at him as she passed._ _

__“Come on in,” Salla said, stepping aside to let Leia through first, then Chewie, and finally Han._ _

__Dark and drab, the hovel was small with a low roof and a matted interior carpet, the ground floor of a building that rose high above them. Bedrooms were accessible through a short hallway to the left of the door jamb. To the right was what Han assumed to be an entertainment area without any of the staples of entertainment. Even the _Falcon_ had a working holoport and the dejarik table; this … this had nothing but a threadbare chair, a low table and two high-backed stools. Holey curtains blew through the doorway, and Han suddenly realized the hovel had no actual door. Maybe in the past a wooden slab would have hung over the threshold, but now the curtains were all that stood between the elements and the people inside. Good thing the wind wasn’t cold; good thing the rain had stopped. _ _

__At the very least food was bubbling in a condenser apparatus near his left elbow. The smell was _good_ , like unsweetened ryshcate, and he wondered if Salla had made the effort on his behalf._ _

__“Not my place,” Salla said, and settled herself on the chair. “It’s awfully tragic what a hundred credits and a ryshcate will get you around here.”_ _

__Han caught Leia’s look, a furious storm about to descend, and reached out to grip her upper arm. With a squeeze he tried to communicate that Salla hadn’t meant any disrespect to the tenants—if slaves could truly be tenants in a prison like this one—but to the system that left them clamoring for a hundred credits and a hunk of extra food._ _

__“So the ryshcate isn’t for me,” Han said, trying to lighten the mood. “I’m hurt, Sal.”_ _

__Salla grinned but her orange eyes didn’t smile with her, and Han got a very bad feeling about … _fuck_. A bad feeling about _everything_. Something in the set of her shoulders. Something about their location. Something about everything made him want to turn tail and run, blaster out and firing. He’d had a nagging sense of doom about this mission from the get-go, but now the feeling was unassailable, goliath. Overwhelming. _ _

__“I’m not your woman, Slick. Go make your own ryshcate,” Salla said, fake smile still in place._ _

__Leia turned a glance to him and then swung her gaze the other way in a move so fast Han thought it wouldn’t register on a normal comm-timer. “I want to leave more credits for the people who live here. Can you arrange that?”_ _

__“No. You can’t,” Salla said, and there was true regret there. Whatever else she was, Salla wasn’t heartless. Remorse lined her sparse words. “You give them credits, they spend the credits, and they’ll be put on a watch list or punished or charged with stealing. I gave the maximum any family group is allowed to have.”_ _

__“By whom? There’s no police force here.” Leia’s voice was brittle, wrought._ _

__“By anyone. Trust me, if you want to help them you just have to do what you’re already doing with the Alliance.”_ _

__Han jerked and Chewie growled, threat obvious in his tone even to Salla. Up until this point the princess and her intermediary both referred to the Alliance as their _mutual friends_. No one had dared say _Alliance_. Treasonous to Imperials and the Hutts … well, the Hutts were fans of the break in tariffs the Moffs granted them. And the blind eye they turned to the slave auctions in the Outer Rim. A Hutt would gladly turn over a few rebels for the bounty alone. _ _

__“You tryin’ to kill us?” Han said, his _bad feeling_ igniting under the reckless fuse of Salla’s words. _ _

__But Leia was much calmer, much more collected than the crew of the _Falcon_ was, and Han suddenly remembered that she was, for all intents and purposes, quite experienced in espionage. _ _

__“I’m assuming there are no informants here?” she asked, as if inquiring about the weather. “Because if there are, and if I find out about them, I will kill you.”_ _

__Cold, razor-sharp and dripping with capability. Leia Organa had been reduced to her basic grit, the strength and utility that had saved her life—and his, if he was gonna be fair—many times. Salla pressed her lips together, watching Leia with careful eyes._ _

__“No,” Salla said after careful consideration. “This place is clean. No one comes into the Shocks.”_ _

___You’re sure?_ Chewie growled._ _

__Salla didn’t answer him, turned instead to Leia, orange eyes serious. “I’m sorry for the intrigue, Your Highness. I had to play the part until we got out here.”_ _

__Han noted the change in Salla’s voice, the slight veneration in her address to Leia. The dip in her chin, the way her lips parted as she breathed. It felt like Salla’s playfulness had been immediately discarded, the nuances of her personality falling away like scraps. Han didn’t know if Salla was rising or falling to Leia’s level, but suddenly Salla Zend was serious. Deadly serious._ _

__“The part?” Han asked._ _

__But Leia ignored him, pursed her lips and tilted her head. “You were being watched at _The Golden Hand_.” _ _

__Not a question: a statement. One upon which a whole host of complications arose. If someone was listening in on Salla, they knew about the deal, knew about Pearl. And if they didn’t already know who Pearl was, Salla had damn well put it out there with all that talk of negotiations and past lives._ _

__“Yes,” Salla answered._ _

__Chewie roared loud and ferocious and Han’s hand convulsed. The hairs on the back of his neck rose as if electrified, as if the Shocks had tazed him. His eyes flew to Leia, small, confined, as she sat cross-legged on the ragged carpet. Her eyes were on Salla, her hands resting in her lap as if she was meditating. Did she not understand? Hadn’t she heard?_ _

__“You sold us out,” Han said, then gritted his teeth, his fist clenching at his side._ _

__He could be over to the chair in three steps. Chewie would stand in front of Leia, knowing Han would want him there. Salla was a good pilot and she handled herself alright on the ground, but Han was bigger, faster. He could take her down. No question. He had no desire to kill Salla, but if she had betrayed him, if she had put Leia in danger, he would do what he needed to do to get his princess off this goddamned planet in one piece._ _

__“Solo, c’mon. I didn’t sell you out!”_ _

__But Han had moved past questioning and was now tearing through green clouds and nests of TIE fighters in his mind. He reached for the DL-44 on his thigh, eyes tight, calculating angles and aim._ _

__“Right,” he muttered and checked Leia’s position. Would she be in the line of fire?_ _

__She hadn’t moved, was eyeing him, his stance, the hand hovering beside his blaster._ _

__“Who the fuck do you think I am? I’m gonna sell you out for not marrying me?” Salla shouted. “I ditched the bug once we got outside!”_ _

___You didn’t tell us we were in danger in the alley_ , Chewie roared. _You lured us here like nerfs to slaughter.__ _

__“They had eyes on us on the street, too. A Twi’lek prowling around the cantina,” Salla said, turning to Chewie and lifting her palms up. “I brought you here because it’s safer. C’mon, guys, you know me better than this.”_ _

__Han shook his head, survival instinct fully engaged. He was furious, anger and betrayal seeping into his chest like parasites: they didn’t belong there, not at all. Salla was a mercenary but she wasn’t a _mercenary_. Like Han himself, she had a personal code that dictated how bad she was willing to be in service to her own survival. And she had no love for the Empire. _ _

__But none of that seemed to matter to him. The only thing preventing him from at least stunning Salla was Leia’s odd quiet, the way she simply sat there on the floor, watching them all with eyes that didn’t look panicked. Eerie, almost. The way the kid sometimes looked._ _

__“Leia?” he muttered._ _

__The princess licked her lips, blinked, and then hopped up and moved to stand by Salla. In one fell swoop, Leia managed to prevent Han from shooting the smuggler behind her._ _

__With an angry hiss Han moved his hand away from his blaster. “You gotta be kidding me.”_ _

___Little Princess_ , Chewie growled. _ _

__“Who is _they_?” Leia asked, turning._ _

__“The Imps,” Salla said, relief obvious in her tone. “I had no choice. Grouka is in their pocket. Or they’re in his. I don’t know which has the upper hand at this point. But they know you’re here and they’re coming for you.”_ _

__Sluiced with jittery anxiety, Han was nearly ready to burst from his skin and haul his Wookiee and princess into the speeder. _They’re coming for you._ _ _

__He knew it. He’d _known_ it. _ _

__“I thought Grouka was dead,” Han said, the only thread of thought he had in his head aside from _move_ and _I knew it_._ _

__“Yeah,” Salla said. “That’s a popular misconception. He’s trying to lure Jabba here. Wants to kill him and take over his spice lanes.”_ _

___Fuck_. The only word Han could think, loud and pounding and _loud_. “Fuck.”_ _

__Salla nodded. “Exactly. We have to get you out.” Her eyes caught Han’s and in them he saw real, true compassion: a sliver of humanity, the same one he’d seen the day he’d left. “All of you. You should never have come here.”_ _

__Han crossed his arms over his chest, thinking. Call up Goldenrod and get him to initiate startup sequences. A half hour to return to the spaceport. Get to the _Falcon_ and bust out of this infernal moon like it was death itself. As long as the Imps hadn’t moved yet, they could do it. And even if they _had_ moved, the _Falcon_ could handle enough resistance to get them to lightspeed. _ _

__“No.”_ _

__One word and all activity stopped around them: the air, the scent of ryshcate, the wind howling outside. One word from Leia in her low, authoritative voice, and the moon stopped spinning. Han’s chest contracted, a sharp pull in his lungs like a hook sinking deeper into muscle and bone and blood until he was mute, eyes swivelling toward her._ _

__“We can’t leave yet,” she continued. “We need the heaters.”_ _

__And Han lost all hope of getting her off the moon in one piece._ _


	7. The Third Arm

“What the hell kind of motherfucking crazy idea… _we are leaving, Leia_.”

She winced, fully understanding why Han was yelling, arms spread wide, eyes lunatic, mouth spluttering and gaping. This was his furious look, this was Han Solo in full battle-mode against a sea of enemies larger than the moon on which they stood. 

She _knew_. She’d seen him like this before.

And she also knew that she would fight him. Long, hard battles: she’d fight him on this point through the highs and lows of their outright warfare until he got it through his thick skull that she wasn’t leaving without her payload. That she _couldn’t_ leave. 

The Alliance couldn’t survive as they were, hemorrhaging credits into new bases every few months only to evacuate them later. That was not a sustainable strategy to bring down the Empire; that was how revolutions were destroyed. Even Leia with her righteous fury and Luke with his endless hope and Han with his ruthless pragmatism couldn’t do anything without credits. 

They needed a base. A long-term base. And their best chance was a tiny, hostile planet that no one could name off the top of their head. Their best chance to defeat the Empire started right here, right now. And Leia was not about to let that chance slip through her fingers. 

“The offer is real?” she asked Salla without turning to look at her, eyes still keyed on Han. Watching him fume like he was a poisonous insect about to strike. “You actually have access to four hundred enviro-stabilizers?”

Salla paused, then said, “Yeah. I know where the heaters are. But Grouka isn’t actually—”

“—selling them, yes, I figured,” Leia answered, still looking at Han. His lips pressed tightly together: he looked as if he was stifling his words but Leia knew that was ridiculous. Han didn’t _stifle_. “What if we stole them instead?”

Quiet like a thunderstorm. So present, so heavy, that Leia found herself holding her breath, eyeing Han with a look she knew he hated. The one that told him she had already made up her mind. The one that told him he’d already lost not only the battle but the war, too.

“No,” he sputtered. “Not a chance in hell, Leia. Are you _insane_?”

“Yes,” she answered him, then turned to look to Salla. “Grouka already sold us out; he sold you out, too, by extension. If the Empire is coming for us…” 

She let the thought hang in the air, unspoken, but everyone finished it for her in their heads. _If the Empire is coming for us, they’re coming for you, too._

And then she brought it home, gave Salla the option she so desperately needed. Even if she didn’t know that she needed it yet. “Join the Alliance. We can keep you safe.”

The mire was already too thick for Salla here. If she was a decent being—and Leia suspected she was—the smuggler couldn’t deliver her Alliance contacts to the Empire. Targeter trusted her, which meant Carlist trusted her, which meant Leia trusted her.

And if Han had almost married her…

 _A thought for another time, Leia_ , she thought, and moved on. 

If Salla didn’t deliver them to the Empire, Grouka the Hutt would be put in the crosshairs. The Moffs might reveal Grouka’s continued survival as punishment for welching on a deal. And while Leia didn’t particularly care about a being who tortured and enslaved sentient beings, she understood that Grouka would take revenge on Salla if she didn’t deliver them to the Moffs. Salla’s only hope then would be that someone would kill Grouka before he had a chance to put a bounty on her.

Which meant her survival was based entirely on Jabba taking out Grouka before Grouka could take out Salla. 

Salla’s best hope was the Alliance any way she squared it. 

“Ah, _fuck_ ,” Han said and threw out his hands. “You’re–what are you doing, Sal?”

Salla ignored him: cocked an eyebrow. “Yeah, I don’t think the Rebel Alliance is much safer than Nar Shaddaa, Highness. Thanks but no thanks.”

 _Sounds about right_ , Chewie growled. 

Leia threw a betrayed look his way— _I thought you were on my side!_ —and then refocused on Salla. “What other choice do you have? You can’t just sell us the stabilizers; Grouka knows who we are and the Moffs will be onto him if you don’t hand us over to them. You either turn us in or you help us. It’s as simple as that.”

Han jumped in again, eyes angry. “Sal—”

“Han here can attest to the relative safety of the Alliance,” Leia interrupted him. “He’s taken refuge with us from Jabba for nearly eighteen months now.”

Han spluttered a series of words in angry denial, but none of it formed a coherent sentence. She learned a long time ago how to render him speechless just as he had learned her own triggers. And while his aim always seemed to be her rabid anger, she was more precise, surgical. She wanted him out of this conversation _now_ , before he had an opportunity to sway Salla’s decision.

 _She’s … not wrong, Cub_ , Chewie rumbled, low and quiet.

And Leia looked, really looked, at Salla Zend, at her eyes, at her hands, and the the grit and nettle of this woman whom Han trusted even as he claimed he’d ended their relationship badly. A woman who, by any rights Leia could see, should hate the man at her back but warned him of danger even as it put herself in danger, too. 

“I think you would rather help us,” Leia added quietly, honesty lining her words. “I think you know it’s the right thing to do. I think you know you are capable of more than what you do here on Nar Shaddaa.”

Hush settled: wiry and stinging. Han’s anger, Salla’s moral quandary, Chewie’s interested rumbles. But Leia knew, she _knew_ , that Salla was not going to betray them. Something in the line of her mouth and the awful look of old love that she had sent Han many times over the course of their three conversations… Something told Leia that even if she couldn’t outright trust Salla, she could depend on her to do what the smuggler thought was generally the right thing. 

“Shit,” Han said from behind Leia. “Sal, _no_. She’s out of her fucking mind. ”

Leia pursed her lips, held a beat and then said, “Doesn’t mean I’m wrong.”

 _Little Princess, there is much danger here_ , Chewie growled. _Both the Hutts and the Empire are coming for you. You need to leave now while you still can._

“They’re always coming for me,” she said, tilting her chin up. “That is nothing new. And I would rather they come for me when I’m prepared.”

“Prepared? What makes you think you’re prepared?” Han sputtered. “You go anywhere near those heaters and you’ll have Grouka and the local Moff on you faster than flies on a bantha.”

Leia gestured to Salla, still sitting in the chair across the room from her. Salla, who watched them with careful, settled eyes. 

“Her,” Leia answered. “She’s what makes me think we’re prepared.”

Han’s eyes cut to Salla then returned to Leia and she saw the first signs of acceptance—grudging, mean acceptance, but acceptance nonetheless—in the mottled green. 

“This is crazy,” he grumbled. “Both of you. Crazy.”

Chewie rumbled, low and uneasy: echoing his captain’s sentiments. _You place too much trust in her. You do not know what Cub did to her._

Salla didn’t seem to comprehend what Chewie said. But Leia did. “I trust Carlist, Chewie. And—” 

She fixed Han with a look, infused it with all the trust, all the hope she had for him in her best moments, the belief in his ability and his character. 

“—Han’s got a hell of a taste in humans,” she said.

Han winced but nodded, her meaning clear. Leia didn’t trust Salla because she wanted to trust Salla; she trusted Salla because Han trusted her. And Leia trusted Han Solo with her life explicitly. Even when she didn’t trust him to stay, even when she didn’t trust him not to hurt her when he left. 

“Fine,” he acceded. “Fine. Where do we start?”

______________________________________________________________________________________________________

As it turned out, they started with the guild badge. 

“It’s not just the badge that I want back,” Salla began as she scrounged through the lackluster pantry. Triumphant, she tossed Han four meager ration bars—one for Han and Leia each and two for Chewie—and then returned to sit in the chair across from Leia. “It has the coordinates of the heater warehouse encoded in it.”

“Why?” Leia asked.

Salla winced. “Grouka doesn’t communicate by comms anymore; he seems to think Jabba’s listening in on the comm frequencies. The few of us who know he’s alive have to set up a series of backdoor channels. He wanted my badge as a sign of my loyalty.”

“And he encoded the coordinates on it?“ Han said, squinting. “That’s shady spy shit right there, Sal.”

“You don’t understand,” she said. “Grouka is super paranoid. There’s only about thirteen people on Nar Shaddaa who know he’s alive. I would bet my cred chip that he’s watching all of us like his life depends on it.”

 _Because it does_ , Leia thought.

“So he asks you for a valuable item, you give it to him, he encodes it with the merchandise coordinates,” Leia said. “He does this with every job you do for him?”

Salla nodded. “It’s quite clever, if you think about it. If Jabba got his hands on any of us, he wouldn’t be able to prove we work for Grouka. There’s no line back to him. That is, of course, if Jabba actually _does_ think Grouka’s alive. I’m not so sure he does. Plus...”

“You have a personal stake in the job,” Han finished for her. 

The smuggler nodded, the bun atop her head moving, too. “It was awful, giving up the badge like that.”

 _Why?_ Chewie growled. _Why is the badge so important to you?_

Salla looked to Han for translation, who waved a hand and said, “Why’s it so important?”

Leia dropped her eyes, remembering what she’d said to Han and Chewie about Alderaanian artifacts. She knew very well how important an object could become by association. She wanted her mother’s favorite crown; she wanted a pair of her father’s shoes; she wanted an arallute to care for. All of these things meant nothing except that they reminded her of home, of people, of a culture that no longer existed. 

She understood. Whatever association Salla had with the badge, it was important to _her_ , if not to Han.

Salla cleared her throat. “Look, it’s not a big deal. Since I figured out what Grouka was planning to do with whoever Targeter sent, I kind of assumed I’d never see it again.”

Her tone might be nonchalant, but the look in her eyes told Leia that Salla was anything but dismissive about the badge. 

“The story of your ex? Was that true?” Leia asked, moving away from the touchy subject. 

“No,” Salla said. “I knew you wouldn’t follow me without a good reason. I figured Solo wouldn’t question me making a bad relationship choice or two.”

Han’s face didn’t change, but he didn’t say anything to contradict her.

She continued after a slight pause. “I never picked up the badge from Grouka’s coder.”

“So you could still get the coordinates?” Leia asked.

Salla licked her her lips but her expression didn’t change otherwise. “I could. Hypothetically.”

Leia watched Salla with careful judgement, the way her long legs crossed above the knee, the way she leaned back in her chair, the hard glint in her eye, and felt an intuitive need to comfort her. Sometimes broken people whispered their pain without words, just in the lines of their mouth or the tension in their bodies. Her father had trained Leia’s eye for both empathy and attack and she could now recognize the same kind of deep-seated, crumbling pain in Salla’s interpersonal relationships as Han sometimes displayed. 

Leia hurried to refocus Salla’s attention. “What if I had shown up and been unable to steal it back? What were you going to do?”

Salla shrugged, still angry but cooling. “I was sure glad to see Slick there in the cantina. Makes my job a hell of a lot easier.”

Han scowled on his stool and tapped his toe against the carpeting. “I’m no thief,” he said, repeating himself from earlier in the day. 

“Sure you are,” Salla said. “I know Shrike taught you the basics—”

But Han interrupted: cold steel dripping with anger. “Drop. It.”

Leia pretended she hadn’t caught the name Salla had said so effortlessly, a name Leia herself had never heard. A name she would be researching the next spare moment she had. _Shrike_ , she tumbled it around her brain, desperate for information. Someone Han didn’t want to remember or someone Han didn’t want her to know about. 

It was tough to tell sometimes. 

Han read the room, seeing that the female half of the team was set against him. “So what I’m hearing is that we are still stealing the badge to get the coordinates that I will use to fly us straight into a trap. Do I have it right?”

Leia blinked, tilted her head and said with the tiniest of smiles on her lips, “That about does it, flyboy.”

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________

By the time the final decisions had been made, the Nar Shaddaa sky had turned a menacing dark blue and then completely black. No starlight made it through the moon’s polluted atmosphere when Nal Hutta passed between it and the system’s sun, Y’Toub. No safety glowrods existed in the Shocks; the settlements were dark, quiet and still. 

Chewie proposed they stay at the slave hovel for the night and Salla agreed, said she’d already arranged for housing for the slaves whose home they occupied. It was unsafe to return to the spaceport, she said. 

“Comm Goldenrod,” Han had muttered to the Wookiee. Tell him to lock the _Falcon_ down tight. No one gets near her until my code is entered in the manual door controls, got it?”

Chewie had roared his agreement and stepped out of the hovel’s entranceway to place the comm call.

Once Leia, Salla and Chewie had decided to hunker down here tonight—Han had resorted to quiet, private rebellion in the safety of his own mind—he’d slapped his thighs, stood up from his stool and loudly informed the group he was going to take a shower. There was no way in hell he was spending another hour sitting in the rainwater that had doused him earlier that day and, frankly, he’d needed some space from his compatriots. 

He felt like he had no idea who these people were. Leia made total sense to him, though she pissed him off. If someone had told him the circumstances of this mission a week ago, he would have predicted with total accuracy what she’d do. It was always duty first with the princess. Of course she’d agree to help Salla in the cantina; of course she’d agree to follow her to the Shocks; _of course_ she wouldn’t take the warnings of everyone in the room and escape Nar Shaddaa before it killed her. 

But then Chewie had betrayed him. With a low growl, Han’s copilot had reminded him that this was Leia’s mission, that she outranked him by any measurable means. 

That stung. 

And then! Oh, and then _Salla_ had jumped into the fray and now they were all about to die together. Wasn’t that just great?

Forty-five minutes later, Han grimaced into the dull mirror of the slave hovel’s only fresher, staring at his reflection in consternation. His eyes looked tired—a look he’d become very familiar with seeing in the mirror when working with the princess—and the line creasing his forehead looked deeper, somehow, than it had just a few hours ago. 

“You’re a damn fool,” he muttered to the Han reflected back to him, and then exited the fresher and made his way back to the entertainment area. 

The hallway passed him in seven steps, curtains covering two entryways for sleeping quarters. The short hallway was lit by only one small solar panel that Han imaged the slaves had installed themselves. The floor was cool beneath his bare feet, wooden blanks blunted by slave feet for years, it seemed. He passed a fissure in the wall, a dense pocket of cracks spider-webbing from one central point: evidence of violence in this home of desperate poverty. 

Everything was doused in the uniquely awful feeling of subjugation. Heteronomy. It reminded him of Corellia, of _Trader’s Luck_ , of having no recourse but to submit and bide his time until he was big enough, strong enough, to escape. 

Han had escaped and he would never submit. Never again.

He emerged into the entertainment area, the sour note of his own history making him scowl, bitter and enraged. What was _with_ his self-reflection? He hadn’t thought this much about his past since …. 

… since _never_. 

_Fucking Salla_ , he thought, stepping past the empty threshold and noting a slim figure in the low-backed chair in the corner of the room. At first Han thought it was Leia: the figure small and the room dark. He imagined what he would say, what he _could_ say, to the princess now that she had well and truly signed his death certificate. 

But then he stepped into the room proper and he could see the figure better. it was Salla huddled deep into that chair. Long legs pulled up, feet perched on the arm of the chair, body turned sideways and chin resting on her knees, Salla didn’t look like she was waiting for him. She looked lost in thought: eyebrows furrowed, fingers twitching. 

“Uh,” he said, stopping midstride. “Hey.”

She lifted her eyes to his, cocked an eyebrow at his complete awkwardness. “Hey, handsome. How was your shower?”

“Too long, apparently,” he quipped, still frozen near the fabric hanging over the front walkway. “Where did everyone go?”

“Back into the bedrooms,” she answered. “Sleeping. Wook in one, princess in the other. You got quite the choice ahead of you there.”

Han scowled. “Choice. Right.”

He knew what Sal was after, could read her like a book. The woman was not subtle, not in the slightest. It was one of the things that had first attracted him to her. Sal reminded him that sometimes life was exactly what it looked like: dirty, cheap and short. Not that she was cheap, not at all: Salla always seemed to rise above herself, seemed possessed of some intrinsic class. Not the same as Leia’s utter high-bred confidence in the law, but still. Something.

But there wasn’t a whole lot of hemming and hawing with her, either. Sex and companionship were needs, physical demands that could make someone vulnerable if not met regularly. And that blunt frankness was exactly the way he wanted to think about intimacy and relationships. An appetite, an itch. 

For young Han, Salla had been a goldmine, exactly the kind of affair he’d wanted in life. Someone who let him in, day or night; someone he trusted to not take it all too seriously. He didn’t want a girlfriend. He didn’t want a relationship. He’d cared for Salla, sure, but hadn’t _loved her_. She was a friend who fucked him and that had been just fine in Han’s book.

But Han had missed something about Salla back then, a smattering of clues he hadn’t picked up in their time together. Just because she _said_ she didn’t want a serious thing with him didn’t mean she didn’t want a serious thing with him. Salla could be casual as fuck, could be hot as a rancor in a moment and walk off intensity on a whim, but she was still just as lonely, just as hungry as the rest of them. 

Salla had grown up faster than he had. It had taken him years to catch on to what she’d known but hadn’t said then. Sometimes you didn’t just need sex. Sometimes you needed a friend, sometimes you needed a particular person. 

And he’d missed that until it was too late, until he’d hurt her and left. Funny that he hadn’t felt badly about it until his life had radically changed with a charter to Alderaan. 

“Trouble in paradise?” Salla asked. 

Han shook his head, trying to clear it. He moved back toward the stool opposite Salla’s chair, swung one long leg over it and leaned up against the divider into the kitchenette. 

“We’re not fucking,” he said, running a hand through his hair. “Leia and me, if that’s what you’re getting at.”

Salla eyed him carefully, didn’t flinch at his words. “Could have fooled me,” she said. “You sure?”

He laughed, bitter and hollow. “Yeah, pretty damn sure.”

He was well aware that he wasn’t sleeping with Leia Organa: _well aware_. There wasn’t much of a doubt about that because he was downright electrified by her. Ready to go in a heartbeat these days: chasing the fading scent of her perfume to capture in his memory for his next spell of alone time. Fantasies about the princess ran across his eyelids at night like a holofilm, worn and beloved. She could look at him a certain way and he’d have a whole host of issues to deal with. She’d done it to him in the middle of _battles_ , for fuck’s sake. 

No one could have ever accused Han Solo of thinking with his cock before now. God _damn_ , it hurt for it to be true at his age and with his experience. He should care less, find someone else for a spell. Get his mind off her.

But no. It was all Leia, all the time. Day and night: Leia. And he didn’t know how to fix it. 

“That’s an awful lot of tension for two people to build up without any way to work it out,” she said, smile affixed. Gloating, almost. “Would you like some help?”

Han tried a smile, felt it reach her knees and die. “You could try, Sal, but I think she’s got a pretty clear preference.”

He knew Salla had been propositioning _him_ , not Leia. And while Salla and he were similar in their personal sexual philosophies—safety was the only precluding factor; gender was in the eye of the beholder and both, all, neither was good, fine, fantastic as long as it was safe—he suspected Leia preferred human males. Just a feeling. And he knew Salla would respect that.

Leia could hold her own against Salla, no doubt about that. But Han wanted to keep this party focused. 

“Lucky for her, we have good specimens for her choosing,” Salla quipped. “I was going to stay out here tonight, but I could always see what the good princess thinks about sharing?”

He leaned his head back, looked to the ceiling, huffed a laugh. “Maybe you’d have more luck than I’ve had. Be my guest.”

Salla’s act dropped like a stone. She’d been snooping and he suddenly realized she’d gotten plenty of information from him without him even realizing it. 

_Damn it, Solo. Get yourself together._

“So you _have_ tried,” Salla said, intent and serious. “And failed, it seems. Interesting.”

Han felt a chill run up his spine, thinking of near-misses, thinking of Leia’s slight weight in his arms as they tumbled to the ground, blaster fire zipping over their heads. Thinking of her breasts pressed against his chest, slim arms around around his torso. Thinking of her lips, her hair, her voice …

“Oh, wow,” Salla said, interrupting more pleasant thoughts. “Look at you. In love with a princess.”

Han rolled his eyes. “Cut it out, Sal.”

“No way. This may be my only chance to see you be rejected by anyone.”

 _Rejected? Ha!_ “I ain’t been rejected,” he growled. “It’s all about work.”

Salla’s face showed her thoughts, bright and amused. Han knew and Salla knew that Leia Organa was clearly haunting him. Han knew he was transparent. He hated it, but he knew. 

“What happened to _I always get what I want_?” Salla asked. “I remember that phrase well.”

Han grimaced. He remembered saying that years ago, an outrageously egotistical statement that embarrassed him now. Not only for its blatant disregard for everyone else’s wants or feelings, but because it wasn’t at all how he felt about Leia.

Whatever that was. 

“Maybe it’s not about what I want anymore,” he said, eyes lowered: mouth dry. 

At first, Han didn’t understand the depth of what he’d said. The words had come barrelling out from his lips, unrestrained and free. He was older now, more experienced; he knew how the galaxy worked and it wasn’t always going to work in his favor. For a brash kid from the Corellian streets, Han had had a lot of gumption to think that everything would go his way if he bitched about it loud enough. 

And then he realized the real reason the words had felt so honest. It wasn’t about his past; it was about her future. Leia’s. What she wanted. 

Salla paused, her beautiful eyes studying him with a different sort of concern, like she didn’t recognize his face, hadn’t been up close and personal to him years ago. 

And Han realized—really realized, for the first time, _ever_ —how much he’d changed since he’d joined the fight against the Empire. Since he’d met Leia.

Seconds of quiet ticked by him as he wandered, lost, through his memories. A seductive heaviness, a nocturnal truth: the pain of self-actualization. 

“Han,” Salla whispered. 

The sound of his name pulled him back to the room, to the woman in front of him. Salla’s body hadn’t moved but she suddenly seemed friendlier, like the woman he’d known years ago. Her bun leaned to the left, no longer rigidly tucked at the top of her head. He noticed she’d loosened the ties on the front of her shirt and he could see the tantalizing skin of her collarbones. 

And he couldn’t keep his mind on the present, thrown back into the past. He remembered quiet moments with Salla, the kindness she displayed when it was just the two of them. Sex, yes, of course; it had always been good with her. Adventurous and fun, regular. All that he’d thought he needed.

But Han realized that he’d missed the larger picture, that Salla had perhaps understood their arrangement better than he had. For him, Salla was convenient and trustworthy, a shared history. Someone who understood the job the way that the people in the bars and the planetside fucks just didn’t. 

And was it possible—how could it be possible?—that Salla had felt that way for _him_ all those years ago? While he was thinking of her as a good time, as a friend? Had he led the party, had she bent to accommodate his perceptions of their relationship?

_Maybe it’s not about what I want anymore._

_Oh fuck_ , he thought. _Oh …. Oh, fuck._

His brain shut down, closed around itself, self-actualization done. There was nothing that prepared him for the depth of these thoughts, the utter _shame and guilt_ that cascaded through him like an avalanche. And his brain simply wouldn’t comprehend it, didn’t have the faculty for it. It was like trying to sew a third arm onto his body: the thought didn’t fit. He was completely unequipped to deal with the kind of emotion he felt at finally understanding what his abandonment must have done to Salla. 

“I’m off to bed,” he said. Too loud, a little frantic. “G’night.”

With quick, heavy steps Han moved to the bedrooms, lucked out when the first one he peered into contained an exhausted Wookiee, and bunkered down for the night without a shred of a thought about what his subconscious now knew.


	8. In the Way

His hands were in her hair, pulling, tangling, and his weight pressed down on her like a shadow: ethereal and far too light for the spark he lit within her. 

“Leia,” he said, lips at her jaw, voice like gravel and heat.

Her body spasmed under him, triggered by the deep, stroking timbre of his voice. Suddenly she had arms, legs, movement, and she surged. She wrapped her arms around him, one around his upper back, one in his hair, _gripping_ his too-light body close to hers. Her breath was too loud in the space between them and so she pulled his hair and directed his mouth to hers.

Immediate heat, the roll of his tongue against her lips, against her teeth. Rough, scraping, absolutely punishing, he kissed her and she wasn’t afraid. She was sizzling. Electric. 

His hands left her hair, pressed into the worn wood beside her head and she realized she was on a floor, melting into it, stuck without an exit strategy but why would she need an exit strategy if he was finally kissing her like this? The tension was there, yes, but the _relief_ was stronger. How long had she waited for him to kiss her, to melt into sensation with her? _Finally._

She tried to raise a knee to wrap it around his shadow hips, bring him closer to her, but found her knee stubbornly stuck to the floor. 

He lifted his hips, the slight weight gone and she immediately moved to follow him. But her hips were held flush to the wooden slats, too, as was her neck, shoulder blades and now even her elbows. 

“Han,” she tried to say but _oh god_ now she was falling into the floor and her mouth was left in a scream, the noise silenced, her body immobile and frozen as her heat surged, palpable desire running up and down her body like impossible torture. The want, the sheer depth of need, like the seconds before climax when all else faded but that one need, so close, so close, so …

Leia’s eyes snapped open, lips parted, skin tingling, the ebb of an unrealized orgasm drifting away from her like a curse. Like a sudden drop of cabin pressure. Like her brain had missed the desperate call of her body and now she was left with unbidden electric shocks. 

She sighed, sat up on the bare cot of her (very public) bedroom, and swept her hair out of her eyes. It was going to be one of those days, was it? With unnamed sexual visitors in her dreams and a lagging sense of nearly-there fulfillment? 

Leia threw her legs over the side of the cot and decided to start her day, forgetting that her unnamed sexual visitor had had a name.

A very familiar name. Han.  
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Early morning didn’t do Nar Shaddaa any favors. Leia eyed the tired, limping light she spotted between the folds of the curtain above the threshold and sighed. No rain fell with the dawn but a wind had picked up, whipping the curtain into a frenzy in the hovel’s threshold. A whistle echoed through the hallway as outside air rushed in and out, blowing dust and debris across the floor.

The sound of her awakening coalition was noticeably absent. She knew Chewie had taken the other bedroom and that Salla had planned to sleep on the living room floor. She had no idea where Han had wound up and pretended that she didn’t care which bedmate he had chosen. 

Leia entered the kitchenette, glanced at a sleeping Salla on the floor of the entertainment area, grabbed a ration bar and moved back through the hallway. She swept the curtain aside and stepped into the bluster of the world outside the slave hovel.

It was still early, muted light swept through the avenues and windbreaks of the buildings. Dark corners punctured the daylight where Y’Toub’s rays couldn’t reach. Here the precipitation clung in puddles and small ponds, and Leia wondered if perhaps the chemical makeup of the rain predisposed it to quick evaporation with direct sunlight. The ground elsewhere was dry, dusty. 

What an odd, unexpected world. 

Leia took a deep breath and tried to focus. Her beleaguered nerves were shot and she still felt the residual effects from her unsatisfying dream. She was in no shape to face any of the people in the slave quarters behind her. She had no explanation for these dreams when they occurred—and they occurred far too often for her comfort—and while she could sometimes find the glimmer of the truth, she often simply suppressed it in favor of moving forward with her plans. 

But it took time to suppress. And she needed that time. If Han found her like this, if he _ever_ found her like this, she was not sure how she would react. 

“Jai!” a young voice shouted.

Leia turned her head and spotted several beings collecting debris from the street before it could be swept into the air by the wind. Children, she noted: they were human children. 

She swallowed, her mouth dry. 

_Children._

Vulnerable beings, incapable of taking care of themselves, thin and hunched, sweeping the streets of their community for who-knows-what. Skin tones in a range of color, terrifyingly young and nearing adulthood, with slow, careful steps and hasty, excited jogs. Beautiful and heart-wrenching at the same time.

 _Where are the children?_ she’d asked herself yesterday. _Here_ , the bowels of Nar Shaddaa replied, and Leia was in rare danger of blasting a hole into the first free person she saw in this neighborhood. 

She took a breath and without conscious thought her feet carried her to the nearest youngling. A girl: about eight years old, blonde hair pulled back into a top knot, dusty tanned skin lovely in the lame sunlight. She was crouched low, picking up scrap metal with careful fingers as Leia approached her.

“Hello,” Leia said, tempering her voice to sound harmless. It was surprisingly difficult; she’d spent most of the past few years commanding. 

It seemed voices had a memory all their own.

The girl looked up, suspicious: deep, blue eyes narrowed. “Hello.”

“I’m not going to hurt you,” Leia said.

The girl gripped the tin and aluminum in her hands and stood to her full height. She came up to Leia’s waist. Small, even by Leia’s standards. 

“What do you want?” she asked.

Leia opened her mouth, unsure how to speak to this little girl. She was looking at Leia with annoyance, with a look that clearly said she was being disrupted from a very important routine activity. 

“Can I ask … what you’re doing?” she asked, finally able to speak Basic words.

The little girl blinked, her eyes widening as she took in Leia’s hair, her military-style boots, the kindness in her eyes. Skeptical, she asked, “Are you an outsider?”

“I suppose so,” Leia said. “My name is Leia.”

“Katya,” the little girl offered. “Are you a buyer?”

Leia recoiled as if physically slapped. “No, of course not.”

A buyer? To own another being? The thought made her sick.

“Then why are you here?” Katya asked. “Nobody but us and buyers here.”

Leia frowned and realized she had been more distracted than she’d originally thought she had been this morning. Normally she would have had an answer for this question before it had been asked. Normally she would have anticipated the question. This had been her _job._

Damn dream was making her dangerously distracted.

Leia pressed her lips together and crouched down, sitting on her heels, trying to appear harmless. “I’m not here to hurt you.”

Katya tilted her head, eyeing Leia with open curiosity. “What’s that?”

Furrowing her brow, Leia just stared blankly at the little girl, confused.

“Food?” Katya clarified, pointing at Leia’s hand.

Leia’s eyes cut to the ration bar clenched in her fist, nearly crushed. The wrapping showed a deep fissure where Leia’s fingers had gripped the bar. 

Without hesitation, Leia held it out to the little blonde girl. “Take it, please,” she said. “I’m not hungry.”

Deep blue eyes looked completely confused by that statement but the little girl grabbed the ration bar anyway, hiding it in the folds of her shirt, hidden from view. She moved quickly, like an insect, expertly finding the pocket without a second of wasted energy. 

Leia wondered why Katya didn’t eat it right then and there, but reserved that question for another time. 

“What are you doing with those?” she asked instead, gesturing to the scrap metal in the little girl’s hand. Blunted pieces of metal alloys, light and covered in dust: hundreds of pieces of it blew across the streets of the Shocks in the wind. 

“Momma said to.”

“Do you take it back to your mother? Does she sell it?” Leia asked, thinking of an underground market in the slave community, a clandestine place to make trades, perhaps a bartering economy. 

It seemed reasonable; she’d seen many such black markets on her humanitarian relief tours while in the senate. A revolution all their own in a society that believed some beings did not deserve to have or sell anything, that ownership was a gift for the wealthy. 

Luke had spoken of the illegal underground marketplaces of Tatooine, places he had not been allowed to visit but which had piqued his curiosity as a young boy. _The slaves made things_ , he’d once told her, deep in the night on a mission to Callos. _Beautiful things. Trinkets and jewelry and things you could only find there in Mos Espa._

Individualism, she’d always thought. The deep desire to make an impact in the galaxy, no matter how small. 

Leia had been ashamed to realize her first thought had been to recruit such industrious beings into the Alliance. Surely they would want to work for the light side, surely they’d want to help the rebel cause? A win-win situation. 

She’d almost put in a request to High Command to visit Tatooine in the hopes of instigating a slave rebellion. 

It had been her father’s voice in her head that had stopped her.

 _Sentient beings deserve freedom, even the freedom to disagree with you and_ not _join your particular political uprising,_ Bail had told her. _Stop your thrusters right there, Leia, and get to work freeing everyone._

But Katya looked confused. “Sell it?”

“Does your mother get something for the metal? Food?”

The little girl shook her head, expression still mystified. “I put it over there.”

She pointed to a large, red bin, over six meters tall, down the street from the slave hovel in which Leia had slept the night before. It was only visible because of its garish color and the weather barrier that overlay it, shimmering in the early-morning sunlight.

“A trash compactor?” Leia asked, frowning. “Why do you put it there?”

The little girl shrugged. “Momma says we have to do it or no one will.” 

Leia suddenly understood, her brain catching up to the little girl’s so quickly it hit her with a _thump_. This was the sum total of the slave community’s ability to keep their settlement clean and safe. After the nights, when the Shocks were dark and silent, the slave children were sent out to collect the refuse of the night and dispose of it safely.

_Community._

This wasn’t an underground scrap metal market. This wasn’t about individualism or ownership. This was a crude, basic tenet of civilization on a world in which the free sectors didn’t have any: garbage collecting. Citizenship. Helping one’s neighbor.

Leia’s heart squeezed and she shut her eyes.

Katya continued, oblivious to Leia’s emotional reaction. She pointed to an older boy across the street, pale, with long limbs and a slight limp. “Jai and I race.”

“Is Jai your brother?”

The little girl nodded. “He’s faster but I’ll beat him when I grow.”

Leia smiled, her heart in shambles, the evidence of basic goodness in the face of personal devastation so achingly present that it stole her breath. She could only nod, wordless. 

_This_ was why she needed to bring the heaters back to the Alliance. _This._ She had to succeed to free the people who found spare energy to foster community in direct opposition to the evil beings who owned them. Her life was a small price to pay for their freedom: Han’s life, Chewie’s, Salla’s. 

Was she insane, as Han had accused her of last night? Yes. But she would rather be crazy and get the job done than sane and unmoved by the common decency of these people. If her conscience was clear when the Imperial blaster bolt came, she would die a happy woman. 

“Pearl,” a deep voice said behind her.

 _Han._ He’d found her.

Every breathy, whimpered plea from her dream came to her in one fell swoop, rushing and bounding like whitewater rapids through her stomach. Embarrassment burned her cheeks and she had to remind herself that Han had no knowledge of what she had dreamt. Of her desperate need for his hands, his lips, his admiration and pride and adoration—

 _Stop it_ , she ordered herself. _He speaks once and all your big talk of sacrifice and freedom crumbles to dust? Get a grip, Organa._

Leia cleared her throat, stood, nodded a quick thanks to Katya, and walked back to the hovel. Han was posted outside the threshold like a sentry, stiff and unyielding, his shirt open and the remnants of a dense panic in his eyes. 

“The hell were you doing?” he asked her, low, under his breath. “Wandering around out there? You could’ve been killed.”

He was breathing hard, sculpted muscles expanding and contracting with every inhale. Leia’s eyes fell without her permission, the unobstructed view of previously hidden skin, hair, muscle and pure Solo physiology warring with her better nature. She wondered how that hair felt against her fingertips, wondered what that skin tasted like, wondered—briefly—what he would do if she just pressed her lips to the indent of his collarbone, ran her tongue over that patch of skin stretched so deliciously over his Adam’s apple. 

_Focus._

She turned her head to look at the children again, eyeing their collections, their small bodies crouched in the dirt, playing games with each other as they picked up debris. Katya had moved to her brother, was helping him step over a pile of duracrete that had fallen from the residence that rose high above them into the green clouds and weak sunlight. 

“I don’t know,” she answered Han. 

His eyes were cautious, calculating, questioning. “Want some breakfast?” he said, obviously trying to steer her back inside where it was safe.

She had a quick, buzzing thought that, for Han, her conversation with the slave child _was_ dangerous. The more she shored up her own defenses, her own resolve to do what needed to be done here on Nar Shaddaa, the harder she’d fight him should he decide to oppose her. 

He didn’t stand a chance.

“I’m not hungry,” she said, re-entering the hovel and sweeping the curtain behind her as she went. 

______________________________________________________________________________________________________

Two hours later Han pulled their stolen speeder out of the Shocks and into the mid-level docking bay of a patchy, rundown hotel on the far end of Grouka’s district. The area was certainly less busy than the street outside _The Golden Hand_ had been but by no means quiet. Leia spotted two Ishi Tib males walking hand-in-hand down the far side of the street and a quartet of loud, rambunctious teenaged humans throwing balls of flimsies at each other by the ground-level entrance of the hotel.

Otherwise, the block was still and quiet as the speeder’s hoverlifts settled onto the sixth story platform. 

“We’re here,” Han announced to his passengers. “Wherever _here_ is.”

Leia hopped out of the speeder first and walked to the lip of the platform protecting her from falling to her death on the streets below. “You’re sure he’s there?”

She turned to look at Salla, climbing out of the speeder with Han and Chewie. “I’m about seventy percent sure. This was the last place I met him.”

“Damn well better be more than seventy percent sure,” Han grumbled, hefting Chewie’s pack of surveillance equipment over his right shoulder. “You want one here on the platform, pal?”

Chewie rumbled. _Three here, Cub. If the coder is living across the street, we’ll need eyes on three different angles of the window._

He said more but Leia couldn’t translate it; technical jargon wasn’t her specialty, even in Basic. She wouldn’t have understood him if the Wookiee had suddenly articulated his directions in perfect, Threepio-esque High Alderaanian. But she listened, trying to pick up discernible fragments.

_… cornerstone … angle is ideal … shifting wind patterns …_

“You wanna help me actually do this shit or are you just gonna tell me what you want?” Han griped, bent over the lip of the platform.

Leia eyed him, his flared annoyance, the way his teeth were gritted and eyes narrowed as he lumbered off the ledge and hoisted the pack over to the corner Chewie had mentioned. Han set it down, threw a sarcastic salute to his first mate and dropped to a knee to install a cam. 

“This whole thing … bullshit … can’t trust a goddamned …”

She didn’t catch the rest and frankly didn’t want to. It wasn’t unusual for Han to fall into mulishness when he’d been outvoted or ordered to do something with which he disagreed. She’d witnessed it several times during their acquaintance, always in times of stress and always loud enough for her to hear.

But the stiff line of his spine, the tension in his shoulders, the bitter almost-sneer to his lips … that wasn’t Han. His stubborn pride notwithstanding, his normal default setting was amused teasing. Enduring sarcasm. In times of crisis or emotional turbulence he’d revert back to snide anger, but there wasn’t a being she’d ever met in battle that didn’t resort to some sort of kill-or-be-killed mentality when the situation turned dire.

Survival instincts were amazing, complex things. Han had done an awful lot of surviving.

He seemed jumpy, though, afraid. Trigger-happy. Like his nerves had already caught fire and he was dead-set on discovering who the arsonist was. If she didn’t know better, she would think that Han had been the one with an unsatisfactory dream and an empathetic crisis this morning. 

It worried Leia. But she didn’t have a reason to pry and with Salla in the group, she knew Han wouldn’t talk about it. At some point Leia would try to separate them, give Han a chance to breathe without the pressure of his ex-lover’s presence. 

For whatever it was worth, he was most agreeable when the two of them were alone. 

“The room is ready?” Leia asked Salla.

Salla looked like the most well-rested member of their group by far, which made little sense. Leia had seen her asleep on the floor this morning. She understood that in smuggling, appearances were important, that being impenetrable and strong was part of the act of finalizing deals. A distressed smuggler was not a rich smuggler. 

But as Leia eyed Salla, she became more and more aware of how important the facade was. Salla’s hair was free today, shifting in the wind, curling into a dense cloud around her head. She wore a flight suit, dark blue and form-fitting, zipped to her neck and clinging to her like a second skin, blending into her natural skin tone with a sensuality that Leia herself could never have pulled off. A belt sat at her hips and Leia could spot a deadly-looking vibroknife and an electrical charge clipped to it. Nothing in her presence was sexual: everything was hard utility. And yet she oozed stealth and finesse and seduction in a way that didn’t seem conscious at all.

Perhaps being a female smuggler had forged Salla’s sexuality into a kind of weapon, a different kind of vibroknife. Leia would have to consider that a bit later.

“Room is ready,” Salla confirmed, turning to address Leia. “I have the codes. We can get set up once the dynamic duo is done out here.”

They turned to watch Han and Chewie mount three cams at different angles, lugging a sack of equipment behind them like a slab of prized nerf steaks. Their low grumbles echoed back to the women, harsh and at some points derogatory. Leia winced to hear Han call Chewie a moron mop-head without a lick of sense.

“Don’t worry,” Salla said, apparently catching Leia’s reaction. “Those two will insult each other into the great beyond. It’s apparently a sign of brotherly love or something.”

Leia stiffened, unsure if she was offended that Salla thought Leia wouldn’t already know this, or uncomfortable that she’d been caught expressing a personal thought. 

“Yes,” she said, and left it there, unsure what else to say.

“It’s funny, though,” Salla replied regardless of Leia’s curtness. “Solo seems a little angrier than usual this morning, hmm?”

“Oh?” Leia said, mindful of Han’s deep desire for privacy. 

Salla turned to her, shoulders square and feet planted. Leia had to lift her chin to look the smuggler in the eye.

“You haven’t noticed?” Salla asked. 

Salla’s eyes shifted from Han and Chewie and back down to Leia, and Leia swallowed the urge to reply that _yes_ , of course she had noticed. Jealousy was an odd companion and one she was still fighting. Salla had logical reason to doubt that Leia knew Han as she did. 

_She’s slept with him. He nearly married her. She doesn’t dream of his lips, or his hips, or the way he looks in the throes of passion._

_She already knows._

_Why would she think you know anything at all about him?_

Leia brought her hands to the dip of her abdomen, interlaced her fingers, struggling to compose herself. This was a useless line of thought and would do nothing to keep them alive or help the Alliance.

“I would have thought …?” Salla trailed off.

Leia’s brain tumbled into working order with sudden, brutal efficiency. She had a choice here: confirm to her Alliance-approved intermediary that Han Solo was acting strangely. This was something she’d normally tell _any_ member of a team if a teammate seemed odd. It was standard protocol: if one was going into battle with someone at her back, one should disclose all shifts in mental or physical state.

The Alliance would question why Leia _didn’t_ confirm Salla’s observation.

But Leia tasted disloyalty at the idea of talking about Han in any respect, not just to Salla but to anyone except maybe Chewie. And if Chewie hadn’t said anything yet, Leia sure as hell wouldn’t do it. Han’s mind was his own; if she respected him enough to trust him on this mission, she should respect his right to privacy. 

“I haven’t noticed anything,” Leia replied, smoothly and without hesitation. “Perhaps he didn’t sleep well last night.”

Salla arched a brow but didn’t disagree. “Sure. Or he’s pissed at me for what I said yesterday.”

Leia’s brain exploded, a veritable mass of thoughts that zinged around her head like blaster bolts in a magnetically-sealed bulkhead. Her entire perception of the platform, the forms of Han and Chewie arguing by the ledge, the formidable figure of Salla right beside her, all turned sharp, razor-edged sharp, like the world had suddenly become so much clearer. 

_Said to him._

But Salla continued, heedless of the state into which she’d thrown Leia. “I hope you know I was kidding.”

Leia blinked. “Kidding?”

And there was that damn authenticity again, radiating from Salla like a corona or a soundwave. But for this confidence in Salla’s veracity, it would be so easy for Leia to let her jealousy color the way she regarded the other woman. 

Salla’s history with Han was no reason to treat her any differently than any other member of this group. 

“Yeah,” Salla said, shrugging. “I made a joke about sleeping with you last night and he seemed … well. He didn’t react well.”

Leia wanted to maintain her royal composure but failed as she laughed, the image of Han’s outraged expression coming to mind. “I’m sure he didn’t,” she said. “He’s not keen on me knowing much about him. He’d probably assume I was after his deep, dark secrets.”

Salla smiled. “He does like a mystery.”

Han and Chewie moved to the third corner of the platform, crouched and loudly debating the merits of adhesive binds to keep the cams in place. Leia watched them work, sensing that Salla had something else to say. Tension rippled in the area around her, unease sitting in her shoulders like a weight. 

“I hope you know that I’m good with boundaries,” Salla finally said. “I’m a smuggler, sure, but I’m not scum. I won’t get in the way.”

Natural political instinct—and hard-won training from Bail Organa—kept Leia’s mouth from opening in an _O_ of surprise. “Of course not,” she said, measured and clear. “I trust you.”

But inside Leia’s mind ruptured, debris everywhere. Wreckage and chaos scattered across neurons, resembling a battlefield. Smoke between fragments but all of it, _all of it_ , without direction, without clarity: emotions as visceral as combustible shells. Was this anger? Jealousy? 

_Get in the way?_

Of the mission? Was Salla telling Leia that she wouldn’t let any renewed relationship with Han get in the way of their work here?

Or was it the complete opposite, that Salla would not get in the way of any burgeoning relationship between Han and Leia?

Leia was utterly lost, unaccustomed to the depth of her ineptitude in discussing such things. Salla’s tone was even and honest; to question her now would be to acknowledge that Leia was not able to discern for herself the intentions of the woman in front of her and that was ridiculous. She was one of the most talented negotiators in the galaxy! If she could stare down Darth Vader and lie about the Death Star plans, she could damn well unravel one smuggler. 

_I trust you_ , she’d said, and she meant it. She trusted Salla. She trusted Han. Anything else was her own emotional failings projected onto them. 

_I won’t get in the way._

And then the smuggler walked away from Leia, reached into the backseat of the speeder and hauled out a small bag with a grunt. 

“Let’s get settled in the room,” Salla shouted behind her as she moved to the hotel entrance. “We might have to wait him out a bit.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _I will NOT be posting chapter nine next “Friday”. As some of you know, I went on vacation last week and had no proper writing time (seriously, what is a vacation without a writing day or two?). I have really enjoyed being two or three weeks ahead of you on this story so that I can return to the chapter before posting and have some distance from it. Since I am only one week ahead of you now, I have been feeling anxious as all hell, and I know no one wants an author to feel anxiety about a regularly-updated multichapter fic!_
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> _So the next chapter will be posted the following week, Thursday, May 10th. Thank you for your patience! I know you will happily indulge in the mass of new fic others will post in the meantime and come back to see what Han, Leia, Chewie and Salla are up to._
> 
>  
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> _See you on May 10th!_


	9. Cause and Effect

If Han had had any expectations for the situation looking better in the morning than it had last night, they had been soundly dashed by sunrise. Dark feelings surrounded him with the light of Y’Toub’s rising: he hadn’t slept well and what sleep he _had_ gotten was pitched with anger and self-recrimination. The unsettling realization that he had truly hurt Salla when he’d left still hung over him like a cloud, grasping at the edge of his thoughts like those old ghost stories Shrike had told him when he was a kid.

The problem wasn’t that he’d hurt her. Life was pain. You were born, you suffered, you died. That was it. Pretending there was anything more to life was useless in the end. He’d seen kids die in the streets; he’d seen good people lose everything. Hope was an ugly word when there was nothing good to hope _for_. Bottle that shit up quick because if you don’t, you were dead that much sooner.

No, the problem wasn’t that he’d hurt Salla. The problem was that _he hadn’t cared that he’d hurt her_. He hadn’t thought twice about it. He’d never considered the ramifications of his midnight escape: he’d left. She’d never contacted him. They’d moved on.

But now … _well_. Now he’d seen it. He’d been confronted with the evidence of Salla’s eyes, the old, tired pain surrounded by scar tissue. The depth of her decency. She’d risked her life to help them, to save them from certain death at the hands of Grouka. 

Salla was all sorts of rough when it came to her business but she wasn’t cruel. And it was starting to occur to him that he might deserve her cruelty for what he’d done to her. He couldn’t ignore her kindness in the face of his betrayal: the consequences of his actions. Something had changed.

And he knew _exactly_ who had done it.

That was a truth that Han was not ready to comprehend. He had space to regret the way he’d treated Salla but there was no room for questions of morality. He _definitely_ didn’t have space to contemplate changing his ways. Because here, now, was Leia in the picture: the very definition of hope. Someone he respected despite—and secretly _because of_ —her unfailing goodness; someone he considered a friend. And the thought of treating Leia the way he’d treated Salla made him sick. 

_You complete shit_ , he thought to himself. _It should have made you sick to do that to Salla, too._

He knew his heart wasn’t truly a living thing, hadn’t been for a long time. What sat in his chest was a repressed, cold thing that he was only now realizing had the capacity to hurt someone else. The phantom beats he’d felt when Leia smiled at him were not proof of his ability to take responsibility for his actions: that was … a different thing entirely. 

And even if he _did_ take responsibility, if he apologized to Salla for treating her like her feelings meant nothing? Even if he did all that, what then? Nothing he could do or say would make her feel any better.

_People get hurt_ , he reminded himself. _People who open their hearts to other people are bound for heartbreak. Nuthin’ for it._

“Do you see anything from the cams on the landing pad, Chewie?” he heard, and his brain snapped back into reality, shoving all introspection into the wild abyss of his subconscious where it couldn’t hurt him. 

A hotel room: dusty, dirty and tiny, full to the brim with three adult humans and a Wookiee. A mission that had gone completely off the rails. A coder in possession of a guild badge that was encoded with coordinates for Leia’s payload. A clusterfuck, well and true.

Han blinked at the ceiling, hearing his own thoughts, and winced. _People who open their hearts are bound for heartbreak _. He pictured Leia crouched near a little slave girl, heart ripped wide open and pouring into the street in front of her. Pictured the countless times he’d witnessed the same brash goodness in Luke, in Chewie.__

__Was that why his conscience suddenly had a voice? Because of _Leia?_ _ _

__He blew out his breath and tried to focus, pushing against his deeper thoughts with every ounce of strength he had._ _

__Their prey was ensconced in a one-bedroom flat directly across the hoverlane from their hotel room. Salla had managed a decent vantage point into the coder’s flat, thanks in no small part to a loan from the Treasury of Rebel Fools and Idealists. Perched high above the littered street, the flat had one window, curtained and shut tight. They couldn’t see the flat’s door; Han supposed it opened into a central hallway that fed into many such identical flats. The building, like the rest of Nar Shaddaa, was covered in dust and grime._ _

__He turned his head to regard the rest of the team._ _

__Chewie had created a makeshift security suite in the far corner of the room on a rickety card table with uneven legs. Han could clearly see three cam readouts and a small receptor the big lug must have thrown onto the coder’s window when Han hadn’t been looking: a soft hum emanated from his corner, tell-tale static from an ill-fixed receptor._ _

__Salla leaned against the wall nearest the holoport, wallpaper peeling around her head like a halo, one long leg crossed over the other and hands shoved into the pockets of her flight suit. Leia sat in the room’s only chair next to the window, elbows on the sill and eyes focused on the coder’s flat._ _

__And Han was sprawled on the one bed in the room: a beaten, dusty queen-sized mattress with sheets of dubious cleanliness._ _

___No,_ Chewie growled. _There is no suspicious activity on the street or in the skies near us.__ _

__Leia sighed but Han sneered, feeling the biting edge of anger lace his smile, his guilt bubbling loudly from its cage._ _

__“Of course you don’t,” he said. “The guy’s a coder. He’s not gonna be up for another hour or two.”_ _

__Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Leia turn a frustrated look on him, her beautiful eyes expectant. “Why do you say that?”_ _

__Han slipped his hands behind his head and crossed his ankles. “Every coder I know is a night-raver. Stays up late; sleeps in late. We’re not all working on princess time, Pearl.”_ _

__He heard her exhale, her frustration readily apparent to him as he wielded her code name like a weapon. Blindly fumbling for the grip to his anger, Han found himself struggling for any sort of rhyme or reason for his rage. And Leia seemed a tight target, the cause of all this chaos. Someone was going to bear the brunt of this self-loathing and it sure as hell wasn’t going to be him._ _

__Han wiped a hand over his face. _Because it’s Leia’s fault you’re an asshole, Solo?_ _ _

__He suddenly knew he shouldn’t be within a hundred meters of this woman in his current state: vengeful and angry with himself as he was. She was dangerous. She was the reason for all this introspection, all the terrible feelings. All the guilt and shame of how he’d treated Salla. All the doubts about himself, the ones he’d never let anyone see._ _

__And he hated— _hated_ —that it all stemmed from her. If it had just been him and Chewie on this mission, he would have tossed a salute to Salla in the cantina and high-tailed it out of there. All this trouble for what? A few hundred heaters? For the Alliance’s super-duper secret base that might buy them another year? Two? _ _

__Annoyance. Needling, nettling annoyance, flushing his body from head to toe, focused solely on the last princess of Alderaan. Narrowed into a beam, tight and magnified the more he thought about _thinking_ and _feeling_ and _hurting_ and _loving_. It wasn’t her fault that he’d fucked Salla over, but it sure as hell was her fault that he felt badly about it. _ _

__“Salla, have you been inside the coder’s flat?” Leia asked._ _

__Salla nodded. “Once or twice. Grouka uses him a lot.”_ _

__Leia turned from the windowsill, eyes intent on Salla. _Uh, oh_ , Han thought. _She’s in problem-solving mode.__ _

__“How much security does he have?” she asked. “Could we get in and out of the flat without him knowing?”_ _

__Salla looked like she was at complete ease, shoulders relaxed and eyes glittering in good humor. Han noted the easy way she lounged against the wall, as if she owned the place._ _

__Han would give his left foot to feel comfort like that right now._ _

__“He’s got the normal stuff. He had a disturbance net built into his window and doorway, though, so we’re not getting in the easy way.”_ _

__Well, _hell_. Breaking and entering had never appealed to Han much. He didn’t mind taking from Imperialist assholes when they deserved it, but Han never felt the need to go out of his way to smash a window and take someone’s personal property. _Cowardly_ , he thought. _Like Shrike._ _ _

__He’d take a head-on fight over this sneaking around any day._ _

__Leia tapped her index finger on her knee. “Disturbance net?”_ _

__Han answered but didn’t bother to sit up, his voice wafting up from his position on the bed. “It’s a product of some pretty hardcore splicing. You trip the net and the coder’s equipment gets deactivated.”_ _

__“By deactivated, you mean—”_ _

__“—every file stored in his databanks goes up in flames, including your precious code. I’ve seen it happen. You don’t wanna trip that net.”_ _

__He’d watched Lando trip a disturbance net once on Caata Blanca. The ensuing fire had consumed records of a bank transfer that meant Lando was suddenly fifty thousand credits poorer than he had been at the start of their adventure. And while Han and Lando didn’t see eye-to-eye on everything, the experience had left Han with a hefty respect for disturbance nets._ _

__He idly wondered what scheme Lando had cooked up while Han and Chewie had been hauling freight for the Alliance._ _

__Leia pursed her lips, looked down at the floor. Han watched her eyes shift side-to-side, as if she was reading the threadbare carpeting for clues. Planning. Calculating. Wading through the endless depths of her incredible mind for a sliver of an idea._ _

__His breath caught and his heart—the cold, dead thing in his chest—thumped against his ribcage like a drum. Deep and thunderous, unavoidable. _Stop it!_ he commanded himself. _This is_ her _fault. You wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for her.__ _

__But his heart thumped again, clear and loud. _Exactly_ , it said. _Exactly.__ _

__Han scrambled to tighten the lid on his thoughts._ _

__“Can you bring up a holo of him?” he asked, and his voice sounded too loud in the quiet room. “Maybe we could catch him on the street?”_ _

__Salla snorted, disparaging humor readily apparent. “If _you_ were the only coder working for Grouka the Hutt, would you let a pubic holo exist on the holonet?”_ _

__“No,” Leia murmured, settling back to watch the coder’s flat through the window again._ _

__And that was it; they had no other recourse. They needed the badge to get the heaters. Salla had last seen the badge in the coder’s flat. They couldn’t get into the coder’s flat through the door or window. They couldn’t use Han, Leia or Chewie to find him on the street because they didn’t know what he looked like. And they couldn’t send Salla to him because he knew Salla …_ _

__“Does he like males or females?” Leia asked quietly._ _

__Han’s heart went cold._ _

__“Females, I think,” Salla answered. “I mean, he asked me to stay the night with him the last time I was there, so at the very least he isn’t against females. Why?”_ _

__But Han knew where Leia was going with this. “No.”_ _

__“I’d just be the first to go in,” Leia said, standing and turning toward the bed where Han lay. “I’ll go in, stun him and then signal you. We get the badge, the disturbance net isn’t triggered, and we’re out of here in a few hours.”_ _

__Han wanted to yell. He wanted to erupt, his anger flying everywhere, venting fire and rage into the air like a volcano on Mustafar. He was worn raw by all this internal conflict, consequences of his actions and his own goddamned moral compass…. And now Leia decided to open the rift further, to expose herself to danger, do her damndest to get herself killed on this planet, whether by slave child or coder or Grouka’s men or the Imperial Moff …_ _

__“You’d go in there alone?” Salla asked, skeptical._ _

__“I can handle myself,” Leia answered, though none of her usual stubbornness was present in her tone. Only chill and certainty. “For ten minutes, yes. I can handle it.”_ _

__“What would you even …?” he shook his head and huffed a laugh. “ _Leia_. How would you get inside? Debate him on the merits of the tax code? C’mon.”_ _

__Leia’s eyes flashed, but her voice was arctic. The dichotomy was striking. “I know it’s difficult for you to imagine, Captain, but I _do_ know how to play a part. I have the anatomy and he doesn’t know me. That eliminates the rest of you. I’m your only hope.”_ _

___Cub_ , Chewie growled._ _

__“Oh, alright. _You have the anatomy_ ,” he repeated, jumping to his feet. “What good is the anatomy if you don’t know how to use it?”_ _

___Cub!_ Chewie roared, louder. _Stop_._ _

__But Han was done. He had struggled all night with his own demons and he was exhausted. He was tired of Leia charging into where she didn’t belong, stomping her foot and demanding everyone cater to her best impulses. Be honorable. Join the Alliance. Save the galaxy._ _

___Bullshit._ _ _

__Leia didn’t miss a beat. She breached the four steps to him like plasma through atmosphere: quick, decisive and without hesitation. She only came up to his breastbone, but her presence was so much larger than her physical stature. Han had to take a quick breath when she stood toe-to-toe with him, her eyes furious and her lips collapsed into one angry line. No one else existed in the hotel room any longer. It was just him and her. And Han was terrified into silence._ _

__“Just because I am careful about how I use my anatomy doesn’t mean I don’t know how to use it,” she breathed._ _

__He opened his mouth to respond but no words came to mind and in the silence, Leia spun on her heel and lunged to the hotel door, open despite no one standing near it. Before Han could comprehend _how the fucking door had opened_ , Leia was through it, boots loud in the hallway, and the door slammed shut by itself, rumbling on its old hinges._ _


End file.
